Installing GSAS-II on Windows

Prerequisites: Before GSAS-II can be installed on your computer, you must install two software packages: python and subversion. These packages are distributed in a number of forms and are discussed below. Note that at present GSAS-II is only distributed via subversion. If you work at an institution with a firewall that blocks downloading files from subversion (uncommon, but known), contact your networking support department or arrange to perform the download from another location. If you can help expand any of these instructions, discover new mechanisms for installing Python, or have problems getting this to work, please let me know.

Python

Python is a computer scripting language, which means that one must have the Python interpreter installed on your computer to run a Python program. However, there are several Python packages required by GSAS-II that are not distributed within Python, so not just any distribution of the Python interpreter will do. For development, we use ​EPD, but expect that several other distributed packages will do fine. Python and all the required packages are open source, so you could, in theory, download the source code for each one and compile them yourself. Most Windows users are likely to prefer to use binary distributions and will prefer using a single download that provides everything they need. For that, select and download one of the packages below and follow directions provided on that site for installation. Note that GSAS-II is being developed with version 2.x of Python (2.7.2 as of December 2011) and has not progressed to version 3.x of Python. This is in part because not all the packages required by GSAS-II are fully supported on Python 3.x on all platforms.

• ​Enthought Python Distribution (EPD) is a commercially licensed Python package that features differing levels of support. Academic users may request a free license at ​http://www.enthought.com/products/edudownload.php. To install, download the .msi file and click on it to invoke the windows installer. While GSAS-II will run in both 64- and 32-bit python. We are using 32-bit for most development work and encourage use of that. Note that this package can be installed without administrator privileges if you install it for only for use by the current user; you may have to choose an install location that you own (a subdirectory of My Documents, for example.)

• ​Free Enthought Python Distribution (EPDFree) is a 32-bit, light-weight version of the EPD package, above, which does not have commercial support. It contains all the packages needed for GSAS-II excluding ​PyOpenGL -- which gets installed automatically. To install EPDFree, download the .msi file from URL ​http://www.enthought.com/products/epd_free.php and click on it to invoke the windows installer. (See note above with regard to administrator privileges.) After installing EPDFree, you can invoke GSAS-II and it will install PyOpenGL from the file PyOpenGL-3.0.2a5.zip that is included with GSAS-II. (Alternatively, you can obtain PyOpenGL from ​here. Run the !PyOpenGL3.0.1.win32.exe file. If you have more than one version of Python on your computer, make sure it installs OpenGL into the EPDFree version.)

• ​Python(x,y) is a free Windows (and Linux) Python distribution. It focuses on supporting the Qt GUI package, while GSAS-II requires Wx, but this distribution does offer Wx and all the other packages that GSAS-II requires, as far as we are aware. Note that when you install, you will either need to select to install all packages or else perform a customized installation to ensure that the Python packages required by GSAS-II are installed. To install, download the .exe file, run it and read the instructions.

• ​ActiveState ActivePython This is commercial licensed software that includes a free version with no support. ActiveState is well respected in the scripting community , but we have not tried this yet.

Subversion

Subversion is a software version tracking system that allows you to download and update the GSAS-II software from the APS subversion server (​https://subversion.xor.aps.anl.gov/pyGSAS/trunk/). You can install a variety of different versions of this software, but the two we recommend for Windows are these:

• ​TortoiseSVN incorporates Subversion capabilities into Windows. See the downloads directory and be sure to install the version (64-bit or 32-bit) appropriate for your version of Windows -- this must match the OS or it will not run. Once TortoiseSVN is installed, follow these installation instructions

or

• mini-svn kit: A 2.5 Mb zip file has been prepared that contains a minimal SVN package, along with a batch file for installing GSAS-II from the APS subversion server. Use these Installation Instructions? to use this kit.

Compiling Fortran Code

Normally you will not need to compile anything. The GSAS-II distribution contains compiled .pyd (library modules) needed by a 32-bit Python version 2.7 interpreter for Windows in the binwin2.7 directory. However, if you are working with an unusual python interpreter or are doing GSAS-II development, compilation instructions can be found here.