Setting up molly

I have now simplified molly to make it easier for people to install (I hope). Mainly this has been a matter of eliminating NAG and switching from the old Figaro DSA library to NDF. This means that the external software should be much easier to get and install if you are not at a STARLINK site because you can use the STARLINK software store to get what you need. I have also altered the way the software is installed and I hope it should be more robust.

Getting the molly software

To get molly, transfer over this gzipped tar file . Download it to an empty directory, gunzip and tar xvf it. It should create sub-directories getline/ molly/ pgplus/ and subrs/. Don't change these around unless you know what you are doing because the setup depends on their existence. Before proceeding, there are various bits of other software that you will need. Get these ready first.

Other software

molly uses PGPLOT for graphics, NDF and FITSIO for some of its I/O and PDA for some numerical work.

PGPLOT is a graphics package written by T.Pearson at Caltech. Information on it and how to install it can be obtained from here . There is another version of PGPLOT maintained by STARLINK which runs over a lower-level package called GKS. Although it is essentially the same, it is not always in step with the Caltech original. Since I link to the Caltech version I advise you to do the same. I will not support linking to the GKS version. Thus you may have to get hold of it even if you are at a STARLINK site, although you should ask around to see if it is already installed first. This is not the case for the remaining software required, and if you are a STARLINK user you may be able to skip to the setup section.

PDA is a library developed by STARLINK to aid replacement of routines from the commercial NAG package. NAG is a good package but it costs money. molly no longer uses NAG. If you are a STARLINK site, you will have PDA installed, if not I direct you to the STARLINK software store .

FITSIO is the FITS package written by Bill Pence of HEASARC. As far as I know it is the same everywhere, but the version I use can be obtained again from STARLINK software store . Again this should be installed already if you are on STARLINK.

NDF is a data format based on STARLINK's HDS system. It is the basis of many of STARLINK's packages such as Kappa and Portable Figaro. NDF has some very nice features. In molly it is used in standalone form in order to be able to communicate files to some of these other STARLINK packages and bits and pieces of my software that use NDF. Once again I direct you to the STARLINK software store if you are not a STARLINK site.

Setup procedure

If all the above is ready then you should now change to the molly/ sub-directory. There you will see a file called BUILD . You need to edit it according to the instructions that you will find inside it.

If you want to run the WWW based help locally for speed (and to ensure that the help is correct for whatever version of the software you are running) then point your web browser to the file molly/html/OVERVIEW.html . This has one pointer back to here for the list of software changes, but otherwise all links to help on commands will be stored at your end. If you don't want to do this, you can save yourself a bit of space by deleting the html subdirectory.

Compilers, operating systems

Most of my software is written in Fortran77 and has been compiled successfully under ULTRIX, OSF, Solaris and SunOS with f77 and under Linux with g77. A few C routines are also used for which you will need 'gcc' or 'cc'. BUILD will check for these. Although molly originated under VMS it has been modified enough since then that it will not work under VMS and a bit of work would be needed to get it going.
Tom Marsh, Southampton, trm@astro.soton.ac.uk. 11 Mar 1998.