The latest version of ATOMS can always be found at the ATOMS home-page.2.1The installation procedures are different on Unix, Windows, and Macintosh. These procedures are outlined in the following sections. The ``downloads'' page on the ATOMS web site should make it clear which files must be downloaded for which platform.
If you have any troubles installing or using ATOMS, please file a
bug report. Problems only get fixed if I know about them! See FAQ
![[*]](crossref.png)
on page for some hints
on filing a good bug report.
You can install ATOMS on your Unix computer as a normal user, in which case other users on the system will not normally have access to ATOMS; or as the root, in which case all users on the system can use ATOMS. The installation procedures are very similar and in either case are well automated.
ATOMS is currently developed using perl 5.6 and 5.005 and perl/Tk
800.022 and 800.014. You will need to have Perl 5.004 or later
installed on your computer. You can test the version of Perl by
typing perl -v at the command line. To use TkATOMS you
will need version at least 4.02 of perl/Tk. Version 8 is better
and offers more features. See Chapter for
information on obtaining these packages.
The first time you install ATOMS on your computer, you will need to also install one other packages which supply functionality used by various parts of the ATOMS package. This is the file 'Tk800.022.tar.gz' mentioned above. If you upgrade ATOMS in the future, you probably will not need to reinstall Tk.
The installation instructions are the same for 'Tk800.022.tar.gz' and 'Atoms-3.0beta##.tar.gz'. They should be installed in that order. There used to be a file called the AtomsBundle which needed to be installed prior to installing ATOMS, but it has been folded into the ATOMS distribution. For each package execute the following commands at the command line. «package» refers to the three packages listed above and «directory» refers to the directory that is created when you unpack the archive. %> represents the command line prompt.
%> gzip -dc «package» | tar xvf -
%> cd «directory»
%> perl Makefile.PL
%> make
%> make test
%> make install
There are test suites for Tk and for the ATOMS package. It is a good idea to run them both to be sure that the installation proceeded correctly.
The Tk installation is a bit time consuming since a very large amount of software needs to be compiled. Be patient.
After you install both packages, you are ready to try the
programs. The programs that get installed are listed in
Table . Just rehash and try them out.
| program | purpose |
| 'atoms.pl' | ATOMS program, command line version |
| 'tkatoms.pl' | ATOMS program, GUI version |
| 'dafs.pl' | anomalous scattering simulation |
| 'powder.pl' | powder diffraction simulation |
| 'template.pl' | FEFF template generator |
| 'apt.pl' | absorption database GUI interface |
The installation of ATOMS as a normal user is almost the same as for root. Follow those instructions up to the final step for each package. You will not be able to do the make install step as a normal user. Instead, type private-install to install ATOMS into your own disk space. This step run a simple shell script that comes with the ATOMS distribution and requires that you have the PERL5LIB environment variable set. This points to the location where you keep your personal perl scripts, $HOME/perl/ is a common choice. In CSH or TCSH, type setenv PERL5LIB $HOME/perl. In BASH, type export PERL5LIB=$HOME/perl. You should put that variable definition in one of your login scripts, '.cshrc' for csh or tcsh, '.profile' for BASH.
Now rehash to refresh your execution path and you are ready to use the
programs in Table .
If you have any problems installing any part of ATOMS, please let me know. Streamlining installation procedures is one of the difficult parts of any software projects. Any feedback from users on this topic is extremely valuable.
There is no longer any need to have perl installed on your computer. Simply go to the IFEFFIT downloads page at http://cars9.uchicago.edu/ifeffit/download.html and download the Windows installer package. Double clicking on this will install TkATOMS as well as IFEFFIT and several other programs.
Macintosh is not supported by the current version of ATOMS.
There is no fundamental reason that at least parts of ATOMS (particularly 'atoms.pl') will not install and run on other platforms than those listed above. It should be possible to use ATOMS and perhaps even TkATOMS with BeOS, VMS, OS/2, the Amiga and other platforms. If you are interested in helping me with these ports, please contact me.