Subject: Re: saoimage under linux and XFree86

From: [email-masked] (Shawn Slavin)
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 05:19:04 GMT

Hi.  I had a FreeBSD-1.0 system up on my PC last month, and I tried porting
SAOimage.  It compiled with no problem, using the setup for Ultrix (the truest
BSD system I've used) and making *sure* that the DEC byte-swapping stuff was
not included.  It went without complaint, but every time I tried to open a FITS
image, the pixel values were garbage.  It looked like readnoise!

I tried using a couple different data types (BITPIX), like -32 and 32.
However, it didn't seem to care.  Now, I didn't try to debug this.  I'm sure
that it can be ported, but just beware the fact that a clean compile doesn't
guarantee you anything.

BTW, I used gcc-2.4.5.

Good luck,

Shawn
-- 
Shawn Slavin
Indiana University Astronomy

Internet:  [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Dick Edgar)
Date: 2 Mar 1994 16:49:31 GMT

>that it can be ported, but just beware the fact that a clean compile doesn't

I have done this.  The source code I got had a bug in it, which made it
impossible to read floating-point fits images, even on a Decstation!
Fortunately, the bug has been fixed.  The fixed version is available for
anonymous ftp at uwast.astro.wisc.edu.  The makefile allows for
compilation on various computers, the main difference being byte order
(if you have an IEEE machine, which includes the 386/486 family).  Since
byte order for the '86's is the same as on Ultrix Decstations, tell it
you're a Decstation, and it compiles right out of the box.  There's
another option detailed in the readme files that disables trying to set
up communication with IRAF, so you don't get a couple error messages
when you start it up stand-alone; not too important but a nice cosmetic
feature.

Thanks to Stephan Jansen at the University of Wisconsin, who fixed the
above mentioned bug, and put his version up for anon. ftp.

---------
Richard J. Edgar  ([email-masked])
University of Wisconsin--Madison, Department of Astronomy
"An astrophysicist is someone who sees something working in practice,
and wonders whether it will work in principle." -- Harvey Liszt