PyRAF Release Change Notes

A significant slow down in the performance of some graphics tasks (implot, splot) on RedHat machines was reported.
This was found to be due to the Mesa version distributed with the binary distribution for RedHat.
A new tar file with binaries for RedHat is now available for download. (16 Aug 2002 )
Mesa v3.4.2 was packaged with it and PyOpenGL was rebuilt.
We recommend installing this version of the binary distribution and apologize for any inconvenience.

Version 1.0 of PyRAF has been released.

This version is very similar to the version 1.0beta release. Minor changes were made to PyRAF, and it includes updated versions of numarray (v0.3.6) and PyFITS (v0.7.3). If you installed 1.0beta, we recommend you upgrade to PyRAF 1.0.

The binary distribution of PyRAF has been updated for all platforms. The current tar file is v. 1.0beta2. This does not affect the PyRAF system or the source distribution. This new version has all the changes made to the binary release since the initial release of v1.0 beta.

The following changes were made:

1. A bug was fixed which caused PyRAF to fail on Redhat 6.2 with the following error message:

'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/iraf/iraf/pkg/stsci_python/pyraf/pyraf", line 28, in ?
import sys, os
ImportError: No module named os
>>>

Note: Although the problem has been seen only on Redhat 6.2, the fix applies to all platforms.

2. A bug which prevented pyraf from starting with any command line options has been fixed. Sites which have already downloaded the new pyraf.in should have this fixed.

3. The PyRAF tutorial has been placed in the stsci_python/Doc directory as well as license information for all distributed binaries.

Who should install it?

If you are installing v1.0beta for the first time, you should install this upgraded 1.0beta2 version.

If you already have v1.0beta installed, you can install just a patch:

patch1.0beta2_rh7.tar.gz - for Redhat7.1 and later and Mandrake (this includes patch1.0beta_a)

patch1.0beta2_all.tar.gz - for all other platforms

Thanks to all who gave us feedback!

The problem with the version mismatch for ssl and crypto libraries in the binary release for Redhat 7.1 has been fixed. A patch is now available for download.

Relevent systems:
Redhat 7.2, Redhat 7.3, Mandrake 8.1 and maybe some other versions of Mandrake.

License information has been added to the binary distribution.

A bug was found in the binary distribution which prevents starting PyRAF with any of the command line options, including starting only a Python interactive session. A minor change to stsci_python/Bin/pyraf.in fixes that. The new pyraf.in file can be downloaded from here. To install it: copy it to stsci_python/Bin; go in stsci_python and execute:

cd stsci_python

./configure

chmod +x Bin/pyraf pyraf/pyraf

The 1.0beta binary release of PyRAF for RedHat 7.1 has revealed a problem with the libssl and libcrypto libraries. Apparently Redhat has upgraded both libraries between v7.1 and v7.2. There were reports that the problem appears on Mandrake v8.1 as well. We are working on that and will have a solution shortly.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

A small change was made to the installation directions for the binary distribution to fix a problem with libreadline on RedHat 7.3. The updated directions are applicable to all platforms.

PyRAF version 1.0beta is now available. This version is expected to be the same as the official release (versions of bundled software may change). The beta is primarily intended to test the binary release packaging which should make installation much easier.

The installation scripts have been changed to accommodate cases when there are more than one version of Python installed in the same directory (e.g. RedHat 7.2 comes with executables for python1.5 and python2.1.1 in /usr/lib). Users who have a working version of PyRAF do not need to upgrade.

A new version of PyRAF, v0.9.1 (2001Dec03), has been released. This version has a number of bug fixes, some changes that make it easier to install, and a few feature enhancements. Some changes that may be of interest to users are summarized below. As always, the complete, gory details of all changes made to the PyRAF system are available through the link to the CVS log at the top of the page.

New features:

• The File menu on the graphics window now has a "Load" option that allows an IRAF graphics metacode file to be loaded. Such files can be created using the "Save" menu item or using various IRAF tasks.
• Some new gcur commands were implemented: `C' prints the cursor position, and `I' immediately interrupts the IRAF task (the gcur equivalent to ^C).
• A new function, iraf.unset("var"), can be used to make the specified IRAF environment variable undefined. It can also be used at the command line as 'unset var'. It takes a list of variable names.

Behavior changes and improvements:

• The startup processing is more robust and should succeed even if the `iraf' environment variable has not been defined. The initialization of the `tmp' and `arch' variables to default values is also handled.
• The graphics window (and other Tk widgets) now remain active almost all the time. E.g., you can resize the graphics window, select menu items, etc., while an IRAF task is waiting for a response to a parameter prompt.
• There were changes to make the clcache truly portable from site to site. The clcache stores translated versions of CL scripts and speeds up PyRAF execution.
• The code that decides whether each command line is an IRAF command or a Python statement is a bit cleverer. Now it recognizes some additional Python statements ("y is x", "y in x", "y and x", etc.) as triggers indicating the line should be interpreted as Python rather than CL.
• The behavior of the envget function, used in IRAF CL scripts and also available as iraf.envget(), was modified so that it raises a KeyError exception when the requested variable is not defined (unless an optional default value is also specified.) This better matches IRAF behavior.
• The defpar, deftask, and defpac functions were modified so that they treat ambiguous task and parameter names just like missing names (and so return false). This matches IRAF behavior.

Bug fixes:

• A bug that sometimes caused tab-completion of attributes not to work was fixed.
• A bug was fixed where after some ^C interrupts of graphics tasks, subsequent plots would just appear as a tiny dot.
• Redirection of output to the graphics window status line during interactive graphics is more consistent. (If you notice any remaining cases where output that ought to appear on the status line goes to the terminal window instead, please let us know.)
• Resizing of text in the graphics window works better now. Text lines do not overlap, and the characters are allowed to become somewhat smaller.

A new binary release of PyRAF (v0.8.19) is available. The *.pdf *.ps files have been updated to reflect the new version and have had some very minor changes in the documentation.

The changes to the PyRAF system encompass:

• New PyRAF shared object (*.so) files have been created which explicitly name all libraries required at runtime. This is to accommodate Python installations which have a majority of their C extension modules installed as shared objects.
• A major bug that could cause cached processes to get messed up under rare circumstances (when other tasks were interrupted with ^C) was fixed. The symptom was an error message: "select.error: (9, 'Bad file number')". The process cache is now more robust and should always automatically restart processes that are unresponsive.
• Now if there is an exception importing certain modules (mainly related to problems with the graphics installation), there are error messages generated that will make diagnosing the problem easier.
• A bug encountered when running the nfit1d task was fixed.

Please be aware that since the initial Beta release of PyRAF in early January 2001, there have been two corrections to the system:

• An incorrect shared object (toglcolorsmodule.so) was distributed with the beta version of PyRAF available before 22 January 2001. (Fixed on 22 January 2001).
• PyRAF proper (the *.py files) have been modified and updated to version 0.8.16. (Done on 26 January 2001).

If you have a previous version of PyRAF, you can acquire the new tar file, pyraf_v0.8.16_platform_bin_build1.tar.gz and:

• Unpack the new pyraf_v0.8.16_platform_bin_build1.tar.gz file in a safe directory.
• If you have not already done so, replace the old PyRAF toglcolorsmodule.so file with the corresponding file on the new tar.
• Replace all *.py files in your pyraf directory with the new Python files.
• Define or modify a LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable so the PyRAF shared objects may resolve their dependencies properly. Please see section 3.5 of the updated documentation files (pyraf_install.pdf or pyraf_install.ps).
• Note the latest documentation is only available via the Web page. The documentation files will not be packed onto the tar files until further notice.

An incorrect shared object (toglcolorsmodule.so) was distributed with the beta version of PyRAF available before 22 January 2001. Please acquire the new tar file appropriate for your system (Solaris or Linux). For users who installed the previous version, it is only necessary to do the following to fix your system:

• Unpack the new pyraf_platform_v0.8.9.tar.gz file in a safe directory.
• Replace the old PyRAF toglcolorsmodule.so file with the corresponding file on the new tar.
• Define or modify an LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable so the PyRAF shared objects may resolve their dependencies properly. Please see section 3.5 of the updated documentation files (pyraf_install.pdf or pyraf_install.ps).

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Perry Greenfield & Rick White Questions? Contact help@stsci.edu 2001 Dec 14