Getting Started

Prerequisites

Your platform of choice will need to have the following software installed:

  • Python 2.7; Chimera has not been ported to Python3 yet.
  • Git;

Installation

Current build status: build_status

Chimera currently lives in Github. To install it, go to your install directory, and run:

pip install git+https://github.com/astroufsc/chimera.git

This will clone the official repository and install into your system. Make sure that you have the right permissions to do this.

Distutils will install automatically the following Python dependencies:

  • astropy
  • PyYAML: 3.10
  • Pyro: 3.16
  • RO: 3.3.0
  • SQLAlchemy: 0.9.1
  • numpy: 1.8.0
  • pyephem: 3.7.5.2
  • python-dateutil: 2.2
  • suds: 0.4

Alternative Methods

Alternatively, you can follow the how-tos below to install it on a virtual enviroment and on Windows.

Windows using Anaconda Python distribution

These steps were tested with Anaconda version 2.3.0.

pip install git+https://github.com/astroufsc/chimera.git
  • After install, you can run chimera and its scripts by executing
python C:\Anaconda\Scripts\chimera -vv

On the first run, chimera creates a sample configuration file with fake instruments on %HOMEPATH%\chimera\chimera.config

  • Optional: For a convenient access create a VBS script named chimera.vbs on Desktop containing:
CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run("C:\Anaconda\python.exe C:\Anaconda\Scripts\chimera -vvvvv")

Python virtual environment

For those constrained by limited access to their platform, restrictions to the system provided python or any other reason, the python tool virtualenv provides an isolated environment in which to install Chimera.

  • Install virtualenv;

  • Go to your install dir, and run:

    virtualenv v_name
    
  • This will generate a directory named v_name; go in and type

    source bin/activate
    

    (See the documentation for details).

  • From tyhe same directory, you can now proceed to install as described above.