Downloading and installing FITS

FITS is ready to run out of the box (i.e. provided as pre-compiled binaries) for Windows, macOS and Linux. All versions are available at https://github.com/SternLabTAU/FITS/releases.

The command line version (CLI) is identified by file names beginning with fits**X.X.X, and the graphical version (**GUI) is identified by file names beginning with **fits_gui**X.X.X (X.X.X being the version of FITS).

Download the appropriate archive (e.g. fits_gui1.3.3_MacOS.tar.gz for the GUI version compiled under MacOS), and extract all files from the archive to a folder of your choice.

Windows: Right-click on the downloaded archive, and choose “Extract all”. Choose a target folder, and press the “extract” button, then “finish”. For the CLI - open a command prompt window and cd to the created folder, then run fits. For the GUI - simply run fits_gui.exe. Depending on your security settings, Windows may warn you that fits_gui.exe can’t be run because it is from an unidentified developer. Choose to run it anyway. FITS should now be fully operable.

Mac: Double-click on the downloaded archive within Finder. Archive Utility should create a folder with a name matching the archive (e.g. fits_gui1.3.3_MacOS for fits_gui1.3.3_MacOS.tar.gz). For the CLI - open a Terminal window and cd to the created folder, then run fits. For the GUI - run fits_gui.app. Depending on your security settings, macOS may warn you that “fits_gui.app can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer”. To override this warning, go to System Preferences Security & Privacy General and press the “Open Anyway” button, the “Open”. FITS should now be fully operable.

Linux: For the CLI - Extract the downloaded archive, and run ./fits. Because FITS for Linux open a command prompt window and cd to the created folder, then run fits. If you get a error saying “GLIBCXX was not found”, you will need to compile it from source on your system (see below).

Compiling from source

The most recent version of FITS is available here. In order to compile, FITS requires the Boost library 1.69 and a C++11 supporting compiler. We used gcc 8.2 on Linux (Centos), Clang provided with Xcode9 on MacOS (High Sierra) and MinGW provided with Qt 5.12 on Windows 10 & 7.

Note

Before you start, make sure GCC is in the PATH.

Compiling the command line interface

  1. Download and extract the Boost library 1.69 to a convenient location.

  2. Compile all *.cpp files, referring the compiler to the Boost libraries, e.g.: g++ -std=c++11 -O3 -o fits1.3.2 -I/path/to/boost/ -L/path/to/boost/libs *.cpp

    (here we tell gcc to use c++11 standard, use optimization (-O3) and name the output file (-o) fits1.3.2).

  3. Run FITS with no command line arguments to get the help text

  4. Run FITS with the proper syntax (see Using the command line interface) in order to generate data or infer the required parameter

Compiling the graphical user interface

In order to compile the GUI, you will need (in addition to Boost) the Qt framework, along with Qt Creator. Both are available in open source license here.

Note

When installing the Qt framework, make sure you also install the included MinGW compiler.

  1. Extract the source code zip folder in your favorite location.
  2. Open Qt Creator.
  3. Click File>Open file or project and locate the project file (fits_gui.pro)
  4. Within the project file, replace placeholder text next to __INCLUDEPATH__ with the path to the boost library
  5. Click “fits_gui” in the left toolbox and make sure the configuration is set to Release.
  6. Click Build>Build All. After build completion, FITS executable will be found in the Build directory (you can see where it is under Projects>Build directory that is available from the left toolbar.
  7. Move fits_gui.exe to a new folder. Open the console and navigate to that folder.
    • For windows: Locate windeployqt.exe under bin directory in the Qt installation folder. Run windeployqt.exe with fits_gui.exe as its sole argument: path/to/windeployqt.exe fits_gui.exe.
    • For MacOS: Locate macdeployqt.exe under bin directory in the Qt installation folder. Run macdeployqt with fits_gui as its sole argument: path/to/macdeployqt fits_gui.