Installing GSAS & EXPGUI on Linux

There are so many flavors and releases of Linux in use, it is hard to prepare a installer that works on all platforms. Some testing has been done with Fedora Core 10 & 12. Please send feedback on experience with other systems

Prerequisites

Python: the python interpreter is required to run the install script. This I believe is found on all modern linuxes as part of the basic install.

Subversion: the subversion (also called svn) is required to use this install and update management mechanism. This is a common package, but usually is not installed by default. The presence of this can be tested by typing which svn. To load the package use yum install subversion (works on Redhat).

tcsh: this shell is needed to run the GSAS script. If you will only use EXPGUI, this is not needed. It does not seem to be loaded by default. The presence of this can be tested by typing ls /bin/tcsh. To load the package use yum install tcsh (works on Redhat).

Tcl/Tk? & BLT: EXPGUI requires the Tcl/Tk? interpreter to run. In addition, the BLT graphics package is required for plots (EXPGUI may run without this). It is possible to load Tcl/Tk? and BLT on most versions of Linux, but there seems to be problems running BLT under Tcl/Tk? 8.5. There is also a version of Tcl/Tk? that is included with the GSAS/EXPGUI distribution (.../gsas/exe/ncnrpack), but this has problems on some platforms.

Fedora core 10: the .../gsas/exe/ncnrpack image fails, but the blt.i386 (2.4-28.z.fc10) package works fine.

Fedora core 12: the initial yum-loaded version of BLT failed. Be sure to upgrade to blt.i686 (2.4-32.z.fc12 or later); the .../gsas/exe/ncnrpack also image works fine, but has less attractive fonts.

Installation Commands

The following four commands can be used to create a GSAS installation directory and install GSAS & EXPGUI in that area:

• mkdir ~/gsas
• cd ~/gsas
• curl ​http://11bm.xor.aps.anl.gov/downloads/gsas/svnload/gsassvnlinux.tar.gz | tar xvzf -
• python bootstrap.py

It should be noted that GSAS and EXPGUI desktop shortcuts are created for Gnome (but the icons are not working for FC 12).