GNU Astronomy Utilities manual

3.1 Requirements

GNU Astronomy Utilities 0.0.168-6a58 has several dependencies, they all follow the same basic GNU based build system (like that shown in Quick start), so even if you don’t have them, installing them should be pretty straightforward. In this section we explain each program and any specific note that might be necessary in the installation.

The most basic choice is to build the packages from source your self instead of relying on your distribution’s pre-built packages. You can use the pre-built packages, however, because of the reasons below, we recommend that you build them your self. We will send out notifications in the info-gnuastro mailing list, see Announcements when these requirements are updated so you can update them your self when you need to.

1. For each package, Gnuastro might preform better (or require) certain configuration options that the your distribution’s package managers didn’t add for you. If present, these configuration options are explained during the installation of each. When the proper configuration has not been set, the programs should complain and inform you of it.
2. Your distribution’s prebuilt package might not be the most recent release.
3. For the libraries, they might separate the binary file from the header files, see Known issues.
4. Like any other tool, the science you derive from Gnuastro’s tools highly depend on these lower level dependencies, so generally it is much better to have a close connection with them. By reading their manuals, installing them and staying up to date with changes/bugs in them, your scientific results and understanding will also correspondingly improve.

Read in other formats.
GNU Astronomy Utilities manual, May 2016.