How to Install IRAF v2.16.1
These instructions apply to IRAF v2.16.1, the last version released by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). IRAF is no longer available through NOAO. For an alternative, see the IRAF Community Distribution.
These instructions were developed on Fedora and Ubuntu systems and expanded for MacOS X. They were last tested in July 2017 on MacOS 10.12 Sierra. For tips specific to newer versions of MacOS X, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias maintains a page on How to Install IRAF on MacOS X.
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Acquire an IRAF tarball (i.e., an iraf-[architecture].tar.gz file). These were traditionally available in 32-bit, 64-bit, and "combo" versions. I recommend the combo version, if your operating system allows it; most of IRAF has been updated to 64-bit, but there are a few old packages that work better (or only) in 32-bit.
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Create an IRAF directory, traditionally /iraf/iraf, and unpack the tarball there. For example: tar -xvzf iraf-[architecture].tar.gz
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Make sure you're working in a tcsh environment, because the IRAF installation will fail in bash. Type tcsh in a terminal to get into tcsh.
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Define the $iraf variable in your environment. I have always done this by adding the following line to my .tcshrc file: setenv IRAF "/iraf/iraf/"
To make sure the variable is set, you'll then need to reopen a terminal, re-enter tcsh, or run the .tcshrc file with source ~/.tcshrc
For good measure, I also add the equivalent line to my .bashrc file: export IRAF="/iraf/iraf/"
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On Linux sytems and on Mac OS X up through 10.10 Yosemite, install IRAF for all users with:
sudo /iraf/iraf/install --system
The default answers to the install prompts should be fine.
For Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan and above, you will need to disable System Integrity Protection before running the above command.
Alternatively, you can do a single-user installation with:
sudo /iraf/iraf/install
In this case, answer "no" to the first prompt, then accept the subsequent defaults.
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Install xgterm, which was helpfully included in the IRAF tarball. All you have to do is link the executable to somewhere in your $PATH. For example, you might run the following two commands:
cd /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /iraf/iraf/vendor/x11iraf/bin.macintel/xgterm .
(Use any workable $PATH location in the first command, and swap bin.macintel with bin.linux in the second command as appropriate.)
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Check that it works: go to the folder that will be your personal IRAF home and execute the mkiraf command. Edit any desired preferences in the resulting login.cl file, then try opening an xgterm and starting IRAF.
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Add desired external packages. Go to /iraf/iraf/extern/ (substituting the IRAF directory you created in step #2) and review the instructions in the README file.
Initial set-up for external packages:
sudo ./configure
To list available packages:
sudo make check
To install a particular external package:
sudo make [packagename]
e.g., sudo make stsdas
There is an issue with installing external packages on MacOS 10.13 High Sierra. See this iraf.net thread for details and a workaround.