This page discusses installing the LSC Software Stack from MacPorts under Mac OS X.

Installing the LSC Software Stack from MacPorts

The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system. It provides a command-line driven tool that greatly simplifies the task of compiling and installing open-source software on your Mac.

Officially MacPorts is supported on the current and immediately previous macOS releases, so at the time that is 10.10 (Yosemite) and 10.11 (El Capitan), earlier releases are supported on a best effort basis.

Installing, and updating MacPorts

There is detailed documentation on how to install MacPorts on the project page. It is a simple process, you can either download a binary installer for your platform or download and build the source code yourself. Once MacPorts has been installed you need to apply available updates by running the following:

sudo port -d selfupdate

This checks to see if there is a newer version of MacPorts base available, installing it if appropriate, and updates your ports tree to the latest version. This step should be done every now and again to ensure you are running the latest version, of both MacPorts base and the ports tree.

Enable Stable LSCSoft MacPorts Repository

There is a Stable LSCSoft MacPorts repository available that contains versions of the LSCSoft Suite that are not appropriate for submission to the upstream MacPorts repository, for exmaple utilities for interfacing with the IFO Control system. Whilst you do not need to enable this repository it is recommended. To enable this simply edit the /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf file and add rsync://software.ligo.org/macports so that it is before the default macports.org entry, i.e.:

rsync://software.ligo.org/macports
rsync://rsync.macports.org/release/tarballs/ports.tar [default]

Then simply sync your ports tree, and upgrade any outdated ports.

Installing the LSC Software Stack

With the MacPorts base system now installed, and up to date, it is a straightforward process to install the LSC Software Stack. There is a meta-port that installs all the dependencies required for developing Glue and LALSuite, which can be installed by running:

sudo port install lscsoft-deps

This will then install all the dependencies required for running and developing Glue, LALSuite, and PyLAL from the Git development repositories:

lscsoft-deps @20180424 (science)
Variants:             [+]glue, [+]lalsuite, [+]pylal

Description:          This is a meta-port that depends on all the ports needed
                      for developing Software used within the LIGO Scientific
                      Collaboration.
Homepage:             http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/daswg

Runtime Dependencies: autoconf, automake, git, git-lfs, libtool, pkgconfig,
                      py27-cjson, py27-dnspython, py27-libxml2, py27-m2crypto,
                      py27-numpy, py27-pyrxp, py27-pyxmpp, python27, glib2,
                      fftw-3, fftw-3-single, gsl, hdf5, healpix-c,
                      ldas-tools-framecpp, libframe, libxml2, metaio,
                      py27-astropy, py27-h5py, py27-healpy, py27-pytest,
                      py27-pytest-mpl, py27-shapely, swig, swig-python,
                      py27-matplotlib, py27-matplotlib-basemap, py27-scipy
Platforms:            darwin
License:              unknown
Maintainers:          Email: ram@macports.org, GitHub: skymoo
                      Email: aronnax@macports.org, GitHub: lpsinger
                      Email: ed.maros@ligo.org, GitHub: emaros

Note: this will take a long time to install as one of the dependencies is py27-scipy which, in turn, requires a fortran compiler to be available, as Xcode does not provide a fortran compiler one must be built from source.

After installation you will need to make the MacPorts python the active version, so the appropriate modules can be found, by running:

sudo port select --set python python27

Installing release versions of Glue, LALSuite, etc...

The release version of Glue is also available in MacPorts and can be installed with:

sudo port install glue

The release versions of the LALSuite packages, LAL, LALFrame, LALMetaIO, ..., LALApps, etc... can be installed with:

sudo port install lalapps

Or specific packages can be installed by replacing lalapps, in the above command, with the required package.

Suggested Packages

There are packages which, whilst they are not required for using LSC Software, make things easier. One of these is ipython, an interactive python shell, this can be installed with:

sudo port install py27-ipython -scientific
sudo port select --set ipython ipython27

Keeping your system up-to-date

Periodically you should check that your system is up-to-date and install all appropriate updates, this can be done by running the following:

sudo port selfupdate
sudo port upgrade outdated

Enabling LSCSoft Testing

There is a MacPorts testing repository available that contains versions of the LSCSoft Suite before they have been approved for production use by the SCCB. If you want to enable this simply edit the /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf file and add rsync://software.ligo.org/macports-testing so that it is before the default macports.org entry and the stable LSCSoft repository, i.e.:

rsync://software.ligo.org/macports-testing
rsync://software.ligo.org/macports
rsync://rsync.macports.org/release/tarballs/ports.tar [default]

Then simply sync your ports tree, and upgrade any outdated ports.

Getting help

If you run into any problems building any of the above ports then the quickest way to get this to the attention of the relative MacPorts maintainer is to file a ticket. Please make sure you add ram @ macports.org to the CC field.

For other questions please ask on the LIGOMac mailing list.