3. Installing NumBAT

This chapter provides instructions on installing NumBAT on each platform. Please email michael.steel@mq.edu.au to let us know of any difficulties you encounter, or suggestions for improvements to the install procedure on any platform, but especially for MacOS or Windows.

While NumBAT is developed on Linux, it can also be built natively on both MacOS and Windows. A pre-built executable version is also available for Windows, though it is updated less frequently than the main source code tree. The Linux builds can also be run under virtual machines on MacOS and Windows if desired.

In all cases, the current source code for NumBAT is hosted here on Github. Please always download the latest release from the github page.

You can now skip forward to the section for your operating system: Linux, MacOS or Windows.

Installation instructions for your OS

3.4. Seeking help with building NumBAT

If you are having trouble building NumBAT or are experiencing crashes, we will do our best to assist you.

Before writing for help (see contact details in Introduction to NumBAT), please do the following:

  1. Download the latest version of NumBAT from github and ensure the problem remains.

  2. If on Linux or MacOS, run the script ./backend/nb_runconfig_test.sh from the main NumBAT directory.

    This will create the file ./nb_buildconfig.txt in the main directory with useful details about your build configuration and environment.

    If on Windows, do the same using the file .\backend\nb_runconfig_test.bat instead.

  3. In your email, indicate the date on which you last downloaded NumBAT from github.

  4. Attach the nb_buildconfig.txt file.

  5. If the problem is a crash while running a NumBAT script, please attach the python script file and a description of how to observe the problem.

  6. If you are on Linux and encounter a segfault or “Segmentation violation”, it is especially helpful if you able to follow the instructions under Troubleshooting Linux installs to generate a debugging trace with GDB and send a screen shot of the trace.

3.5. Building the documentation

If you should want to, you can rebuild the documentation you are currently reading. You will need a working LaTeX installation to build the pdf version.

3.5.1. Steps for building the documentation

  • Ensure that all examples have been built.

    Most of the figures will only be available after you have run all the problems in the tutorial, lit_ex and josab_tutorial sub-directories of the examples directory have been run. This can be done by running make in each of those directories. Be aware that some of these problems are quite large and may require some time to complete depending on your computer’s performance.

  • Install documentation related python modules.

    Activate your normal NumBAT python environment and then type

    $ pip3 install sphinx nbsphinx sphinx_subfigure sphinxcontrib-bibtex setuptools pandoc ipython pygments

  • Install Pandoc.

    You may also need to install the Pandoc package for your distribution using your package manager or from https://pandoc.org/ .

  • Build the docs (choosing whichever version you require)

    $ cd <numbat_base>/docs
$ make html
$ make latexpdf

  • The output will be found in the <numbat_base>docsbuild directory.