Installing Demeter from packages: Windows, Mac, Linux

If you run into problems, use The Ifeffit mailing list. Be as explicit as possible about the nature of the problem and remember that saying “This is my problem and this what I've tried so far to fix it” is much more valuable than just “This is my problem.”.

Windows

Most people installing Demeter on a Windows machine will want to use the installer and updater packages. The latest packages can be found here.

Download, double click, answer a few questions. It's that simple.

There is not an automated updater for the software. You must download the updater and install it yourself.

Macintosh OSX

Frank Schima and Joe Fowler have performed yeoman's duty by making Demeter and its tool chain available on MacPorts.

The Macintosh package uses MacPorts and may lag a bit behind the DEMETER source code.

  1. Carefully follow the steps to install Macports at https://www.macports.org/install.php.

  2. Open a new Terminal window and type the following:

     sudo port install xorg-server demeter

It will take a while depending on your computer and network speed.

  3. If this is your first time installing xorg-server, log out and log back in. This is needed to set the DISPLAY environment variable.

  4. If you have recently upgraded to a new version of the Mac operating system, you must re-install all of MacPorts for the new OS. There is no shortcut.

When installation of MacPorts is done, launch ATHENA by typing the following in Terminal:

athena
..Note:: Make sure you are in a directory you have write permission to
(like your home directory) because hidden files are created at launch time.

To update a previously installed version of Demeter to the latest, open a Terminal window and do

sudo port selfupdate && sudo port upgrade demeter

If you are not using a system-wide MacPorts installation, running commands as sudo is not necessary.

Laila Al-Madhagi's hints for successfully installing on the Mac.

Windows under emulation on the Macintosh

The Windows installer can be used under emulation.

While there is not yet a native Mac OS installer for Demeter, it can be run under Windows using the Parallels virtual environment. This has been tested using Windows XP in Parallels 6 running under Snow Leopard, but should also work under other configurations. There are two special notes for installation:

  1. Copy the .exe installer file to the Windows virtual disk, and launch the installer from there.
  2. When prompted, choose a location on the Windows virtual disk to install Strawberry Perl.

Other than that, the software should be able to run normally. For example, you can write and read data files from your Mac OS X disk, if you so choose.

Debian-based or other Linux distributions

There are no Linux packages yet available because no one has yet volunteered to do this work.



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