The distributed binaries require the readline or libedit, and zlib libraries to be installed.
On Debian and its derivatives (Ubuntu, Mint, Devuan, Raspbian etc.):
$ sudo apt install gcc make bison flex zlib1g-dev libreadline-dev
On Fedora and its derivatives (Redhat, Scientific Linux etc.)
$ sudo dnf install gcc make perl flex bison zlib-devel readline-devel
On macOS, you need to have the XCode tools installed. If you haven't, you can install them with:
$ xcode-select --install
Click "Install" to download and install Xcode Command Line Tools.
IRAF v2.18 is available from Github at
https://github.com/iraf-community/iraf/archive/refs/tags/v2.18.tar.gz
The source distribution file is built as a tarball with the package name and version as base directory. Thus, distribution files can be unpacked with the command
$ tar zxf /<path>/iraf-2.18.tar.gz
$ cd iraf-2.18/
Alternatively, the development version can be always retrieved from the Github repository.
Now you can compile IRAF on your system with the command
$ make 2>&1 | tee build.log
The following IRAF architectures are supported:
Architecture | Operating system | Supported CPU types |
---|---|---|
linux64 |
Linux 64 bit | x86_64, arm64, mips64, ppc64, riscv64, alpha, loongarch64 |
linux |
Linux 32 bit | i386, x32, arm, mips |
macos64 |
macOS 64 bit | arm64 |
macintel |
macOS 64 bit | x86_64 |
macosx |
macOS 32 bit | i386 |
freebsd64 |
FreeBSD 64 bit | x86_64 |
freebsd |
FreeBSD 32 bit | i386, arm |
hurd64 |
GNU HURD 64 bit | x86_64 |
hurd |
GNU HURD 32 bit | i386 |
Note that Cygwin and big endian architectures like macosx/ppc are not supported anymore.
IRAF comes with a small set of basic tests to ensure that the build works fine. To execute the tests, run:
$ make test
The output should look like
ecl.e: README.md
ecl.e: files.md ......
ecl.e: images.imcoords.md ...........
ecl.e: images.imfilter.md .x............
ecl.e: images.imfit.md ...
ecl.e: images.imgeom.md ........
ecl.e: images.immatch.md ..
ecl.e: lists.md .......
ecl.e: noao.astutil.md ........
ecl.e: noao.digiphot.photcal.md .
ecl.e: numerical-recipes.md ..........
ecl.e: os.md ..
ecl.e: programming.md ............
ecl.e: sys.vops.md .
ecl.e: test-syntax.md ...xs.
ecl.e: testproc.md ..........................
ecl.e: utilities.nttools.md ..............
Test summary: 128 passed
1 skipped
2 xfailed
Note that xfailed
(x
) are expected failures, which one
does not need to worry about.
For details of the tests, see the file test/README.md
.
There are two options to install the build: system wide (by default
under /usr/local/lib/iraf
), or in-place for the current user
only. If you have root (sudo, admin) access, the system wide
installation is the preferred option.
The system wide installation copies everything that is needed to
/usr/local/lib/iraf
, making it available for all users of the
computer. For this, do the following command:
$ sudo make install
This also installs the links required to run iraf or its commands to
/usr/local/bin
. After the installation finishes, one can directly
start using
$ mkiraf
$ ecl
Note that the mkiraf
command is now optional if a local parameter
storage is not needed. Setting the iraf
environment variable is not
needed to run the system.
The in-place installation just configures the built system in its current location.
$ make inplace
This also installs the links required to run iraf or its commands to
~/.iraf/bin
. This directory should be added to your PATH
variable
so that the IRAF commands can be found by their name. Different to
previous versions, the installation does not touch your login files;
you should edit these files manually to add the path if
needed. Setting the iraf
environment variable is not needed to run
the system.
The build using make can be customized by a number of environment variables:
-
CC - the C compiler to use (default: cc, which is the standard C compiler of the system). gcc and clang are both known to work.
-
CFLAGS - C compiler flags (default
-g -O2
). To build a 32-bit IRAF on a 64-bit system, add-m32
. -
CPPFLAGS - C preprocessor flags (default: empty).
-
LDFLAGS - Linker flags (default: empty). To build a 32-bit IRAF on a 64-bit system, add
-m32
. -
IRAFARCH - IRAF architecture string. This is used as suffix for the binary directory names (i.e.
bin.linux64
,unix/bin.linux64
,noao/bin.linux64
) If not set, the IRAF architecture is determined automatically from the system. If set to an empty string''
, the binary directories are just namedbin
,unix/bin
andnoao/bin
. Note that external packages need to be adjusted to also allow suffix-less bin directory names when build in this case.
The installation using make install recognizes the following environment variables:
-
prefix - Common installation prefix (default:
/usr/local
). The installation goes to${prefix}/lib/iraf
, with symlinks for the user-callable executables in${prefix}/bin
, and the manpages installed in${prefix}/share/man
. Theiraf
variable is set to${prefix}/lib/iraf/
. -
DESTDIR - directory name prepended to each installed target file. This is useful for package creators, where the files are not installed by make in their finaly installation.