Popularity
3.3
Stable
Activity
7.0
Declining
114
23
88

Code Quality Rank: L1
Programming language: C++
License: GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
Tags: Miscellaneous    
Latest version: v3.4.0

casacore alternatives and similar libraries

Based on the "Miscellaneous" category.
Alternatively, view casacore alternatives based on common mentions on social networks and blogs.

Do you think we are missing an alternative of casacore or a related project?

Add another 'Miscellaneous' Library

README

Casacore

A suite of C++ libraries for radio astronomy data processing.

Installation

Debian / Ubuntu

Casacore is now part of Debian and Ubuntu, use apt to search for the package you need:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get search casacore

MacOS

Use Homebrew with the ska-sa tap to install casacore:

$ brew tap ska-sa/tap
$ brew install casacore

Docker

We now also publish docker images for each github branch on quay.io:

$ docker pull quay.io/casacore/casacore:master

Building from source

Getting the source code

The casacore source code is maintained on github.

You can obtain it using:

$ git clone https://github.com/casacore/casacore

Requirements

To compile casacore you need to meet the following requirements:

  • cmake
  • gfortran
  • g++
  • flex
  • bison
  • blas
  • lapack
  • cfitsio (3.181 or later)
  • wcslib (4.20 or later)
  • sofa (optional, only for testing casacore measures)
  • fftw3
  • hdf5 (optional)
  • numpy (optional)
  • boost-python (optional)
  • ncurses (optional)

On Debian / Ubuntu you can install these with:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake gfortran g++ libncurses5-dev \
    libreadline-dev flex bison libblas-dev liblapacke-dev libcfitsio-dev \
    wcslib-dev libfftw3-dev

and the optional libraries:

$ sudo apt-get install libhdf5-serial-dev python-numpy \
    libboost-python-dev libpython3.4-dev libpython2.7-dev

On CentOS7 you can install these with:

$ sudo yum install cmake cmake-gui gcc-gfortran gcc-c++ flex bison \
        blas blas-devel  lapack lapack-devel cfitsio cfitsio-devel \
        wcslib wcslib-devel ncurses ncurses-devel readline readline-devel\
        python-devel boost boost-devel fftw fftw-devel hdf5 hdf5-devel\
        numpy boost-python 

Obtaining measures data

Various parts of casacore require measures data, which requires regular updating. You can obtain the WSRT measures archive from the ASTRON FTP server:

ftp://ftp.astron.nl/outgoing/Measures/

Extract this somewhere on a permanent location on your filesystem.

Compilation

In the casacore source folder run:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make 
make install

there are various flags available to cmake to enable and disable options:

$ cmake -DDATA_DIR=/usr/share/casacore/data -DUSE_OPENMP=ON \
    -DUSE_HDF5=ON -DBUILD_PYTHON=ON -DUSE_THREADS=ON

The DATA_DIR should point to the location where you extracted the measures data. Special variables %CASAROOT% and %CASAHOME% can be used here, which can be set at run time through the .casarc file.

You can build python3 support using -DBUILD_PYTHON3=ON. Note that CMake may have problems detecting the correct python3 libraries and headers, so probably you need to set them manually. For example:

-DPYTHON3_LIBRARY=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpython3.4m.so
-DPYTHON3_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/include/python3.4

To configure Python2 specific settings use:

PYTHON2_EXECUTABLE
PYTHON2_LIBRARY
PYTHON2_INCLUDE_DIR

To configure Python3 specific settings use:

PYTHON3_EXECUTABLE
PYTHON3_LIBRARY
PYTHON3_INCLUDE_DIR

If you run into problems with boost libraries, try setting -DBoost_NO_BOOST_CMAKE=True. This will be necessary if you have the libraries from NRAO casa in your PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Documentation

http://casacore.github.io/casacore

Problems & bugs

If you have any issues compiling or using casacore, please open an issue on the issue tracker on github.

If you have patches please open a pull request. Your contributions are more than welcome! But to maintain a high code quality we have written a contribution manual, please read that first.