IRAF V2.11BETA Release Now Available

IRAF V2.11BETA Release Now Available
(June 30, 1997)

IRAF V2.11BETA, for SunOS and Sun Solaris, is now available from the IRAF FTP archives at iraf.noao.edu in the /pub/v211-beta directory. This is a BETA release of V2.11; the final (EXPORT) V2.11 distribution for SunOS and Solaris will be available in mid-August, with other platforms following throughout the fall. V2.11BETA is being released primarily for sites that will be downloading the new version of STSDAS to provide support for STIS and NICMOS pipeline reductions. Sites that are not planning to install the new version of STSDAS are encouraged to wait for the final release of V2.11 in July to avoid having to do another IRAF installation at that time and to take advantage of the more exhaustive testing and more detailed documentation that will be provided with the export release. Since this is a BETA release modifications can be expected in the final version, primarily fixes for bugs found during the beta test period.

The major highlights of V2.11BETA include:

A single installation of Sun/IRAF will now simultaneously support both SunOS and Solaris.
The FITS image kernel has been installed. What this means is that IRAF tasks can now read and write FITS files directly at runtime. Besides support for classical FITS imagefiles, the new FITS kernel also supports multi-extension FITS files: several FITS files packed into one FITS image with a PHU (Primary Header Unit) that contains global header information shared by the images or other extensions in the file. Other changes have been made in DATAIO and elsewhere to improve support for FITS format data. The native IRAF image format (.imh extension) now provides a machine independent image format.
The contents of several former layered packages and tasks are now part of the standard IRAF distribution. There are over 80 new tasks in V2.11 including those tasks from the IMMATCH, VOL, IMCNV, and NMISC packages.
The default graphics fonts for plotter output have been enhanced to provide more nearly publication-quality graphics output.

V2.11 contains many other changes and many important revisions. A short summary of release notes for IRAF V2.11BETA is available on the Web at http://iraf.noao.edu/v211beta.html, or in the v211-beta distribution directory as the text file "release.notes". More detailed release notes will be available with the final release of V2.11.

---------- pub/v211-beta/README ------------
V2.11 PUBLIC BETA TEST RELEASE
June 30, 1997

V2.11BETA is a beta test release, meaning that it is complete and has undergone basic testing, but hasn't had the minimum of severals weeks of burn-in testing required for a normal export release. To save labor we are making the beta version available only for Sun platforms (this is not because we wish to favor Sun, but because the major IRAF development sites use Suns internally as their main development platform). The V2.11EXPORT release, expected to be available in several weeks after testing is complete, will eventually be available for all IRAF platforms.

Distribution files:

    README                      This file

    as.ssol.gen.Z               "all sources" compressed tar file
    ib.sos4.sun.Z               CORE system binaries for SunOS
    ib.ssol.sun.Z               CORE system binaries for Solaris
    nb.sos4.sun.Z               NOAO package binaries for SunOS
    nb.ssol.sun.Z               NOAO package binaries for SunOS

    release.notes               User revisions summary for V2.11BETA
    notes.v211                  System notes file (detailed/technical)

To install the system you need the AS file and at least one set of binaries, either the sos4 binaries (SunOS) or ssol (Solaris), or both if your server supports both types of clients.

THIS IS A BETA RELEASE. Although the system has undergone initial testing, bugs, some potentially serious, are possible. This is also a major release and compatibility with earlier versions of IRAF is not assured; see the release notes and system notes file for details. It may be advisable to install this beta version of IRAF for experimental use before replacing your production version of IRAF. Please report any bugs so that we can fix them in the EXPORT V2.11 release.

IRAF

NOAO

Last updated: 12Mar1997

IRAF V2.11BETA Release Now Available (June 30, 1997)

IRAF V2.11BETA Release Now Available
(June 30, 1997)