[Ifeffit] Athena Run Time Error Solved!

[Matt Newville]

Hi Paul,

> It turns out that the problem was related to an earlier
> windows-related post (aka the Ravel-ware post).  Although I
> had "cleaned" and reinstalled several times athena and Tk, I
> hadn't given a second thought to tkatoms -- it had no
> relation to athena, right?  wrong!  Upon reintalling tkatoms,
> athena worked.

Thanks!! I believe that Bruce is at the NSLS User Meeting this
week, so I'll attempt to respond for both of us.

> There must be a perl module that is installed only with
> tkatoms that is required by athena.  Consistent with this is
> the observation that artemis worked out-of-the-box (e.g. a
> simple make) without problem.  In any case all is solved.
> It might be a good idea however to investigate this issue
> further as I am fairly sure that this problem will come up
> again (not with me though!)....

Agreed!  The instatllation of Ifeffit + Applications on Unixes
(including Mac OS X) does seem complicated and fragile enough
(especially with respect to atoms, athena, artemis) that we
should think about changing it.  I'm open for suggestions,
but here's one possible approach:

 1. The 'Ifeffit installation' with:
       ./configure ; make ; make install
    installs *only* the base library, compiled applications
    (ifeffit,feffit,autobk,diffkk) and configuration files
    for the extension languages.  These steps do not install
    the perl/python modules.

 2. Basic perl/python wrappers could be installed either with:
      a)  make wrappers ; make wrappers_install
          immediately after the base library installation
      b)  downloading separate kits for the extensions,
          copying the local config from /usr/local/share/ifeffit
          and making according to the scripting language
           perl Makefile.PL ; make install
           python setup.py install

 3. Applications using the extension languages (or in the
    case of atoms/athena/artemis, groups of related  apps)
    could be maintained and installed separately from the
    ifeffit library.  For example, atoms/athena/artemis
    could be installed with:
       install base Ifeffit
       download and unpack Ravel_AAA_IfeffitPerl.tar.gz
       perl Makefile.PL ; make install
    This might make it a lot easier on Bruce to consolidate,
    code and interoperability of the A* perl programs.

    A similar approach could be used for python Apps, hopefully
    including the new fitting GUI from Sam Webb.

At this point, the wrappers and GUIs are changing faster than
the base library, and more people are developing applications
than the library.  Also, it seems possible that there may soon
be enough apps that some people may not need them all.
Anyway, an approach that allows separate releases of the
library and different applications has some appeal.

For Win32, an installer that contains the latest version of
'all apps' is needed, of course.  A binary package (at least of
the base library) for Mac OS X, and possibly even linux, may
also be worth considering.

This basically means an amicable divorce of the source
distribution for the Ifeffit base and Atoms/Athena/Artemis.  I
think it will actually improve installation on the Unixes.
Any opinions on this?

Thanks,

--Matt