VMS/IRAF Installation and Site Manager's Guide

9.5. Installing and maintaining layered software

The procedures for installing layered software products are similar to those used to install the core IRAF system, or update a package. Layered software may be distributed in source only form, or with binaries. The exact procedures to be followed to install a layered product will in general be product dependent, and should be documented in the installation guide for the product.

In brief, the procedure to be followed should resemble the following:

Create the root directory for the new software, somewhere outside the IRAF directories.
Restore the files to disk from a tape or network archive distribution file.
Edit the core system file hlib$extern.pkg to "install" the new package in IRAF. Note that any `$' characters in a VMS pathname should be escaped with a backslash as in the examples. This file is the sole link between the IRAF core system and the external package.
Configure the package BIN directory or directories, either by restoring the BIN to disk from an archive file, or by recompiling and relinking the package with mkpkg.

As always, there are some little things to watch out for. When using mkpkg on a layered package, you must give the name of the package being updated, plus the names of any other external packages used to build the target package, e.g.,

cl> mkpkg -p foo update

where foo is the name of the package being update, e.g., "noao", "local", etc. The -p flag can be omitted by defining PKGENV as a VMS logical name.

Once installed and configured, a layered product may be deinstalled merely by archiving the package directory tree, deleting the files, and commenting out the affected lines in hlib$extern.pkg. With the BINs already configured reinstallation is a simple matter of restoring the files to disk and editing the extern.pkg file.