ALMA-related software engineering topics

Contents:

• Building the casa-core libraries
  • Getting the source-code
  • Building the dependencies
  • Building casa-core itself
• Building CASA
  • Building CCMTools as required by CASA
  • Overview of CCMTools and some relevant notes
  • A prototype build system for CASA using SCons
  • Notes on the classic CASA build
  • How to create a new tool in CASA
  • WCSLIB
  • Interface Description Language (IDL) files
  • Tools
  • Python module
  • IPController
  • Global log tool
  • Table browser
  • Notes on other libraries
• Building libAIR
  • Quick-start for V0.18
  • Quick-start for ALMA
  • More detailed notes
  • libAIR
• Some notes on the GNU toolchain
  • Order dependence of libraries passed to the linker
  • Undefined VTables
  • Position independent code
  • Autoconf for end-users
• Introduction to SCons
  • Two stages of operation
  • Hierarchical builds
  • Useful command-line options
  • Shared-library builder
  • Multi-action builders
• How to create a gain (or other calibration) table for CASA
• Some notes on Python relevant to ALMA and ALMA data reduction
  • Python path vs system path
  • Use relative paths when opening files
  • Documenting functions
  • The getattr function
  • Avoid import‘s within functions
• The wvrserve program
  • Overview
  • Implementation
  • Use
  • Full listing of wvrserve.py