Part of the LIGOtools philosophy is to make software installation as simple and quick as possible for the user. For this reason, many packages are distributed as "binary" distribution files for the most popular operating systems (Linux, SunOS, Darwin), containing precompiled executables, libraries, and/or Matlab MEX-files for that operating system. Unfortunately, this scheme has turned out to be a little too simple, since there are different varieties of Linux in use which provide different low-level system libraries, and also different versions of Matlab in use. Sometimes, the binary distribution file that ligotools_update installs for you by default will not work properly on your system, especially for things involving shared-object libraries or Matlab MEX-files (which are dynamically loadable objects).
One can imagine making LIGOtools smarter about handling alternate binary files for different operating system flavors, but that would add to the effort required to release a new version of a package. A fairly simple workaround, already available in the current scheme, is to uninstall the non-working "binary" version of the package and install the "source" version instead. The "source" version, as its name implies, contains the source code for the package. It is still built and installed automatically, so no extra effort is required on the part of the user; it simply takes longer. It also depends on the user having the necessary tools in their PATH, mainly gcc and the 'mex' compiler (if Matlab MEX-files are to be built).
To do this, use 'ligotools_uninstall' to remove the non-working package, then use 'ligotools_update' to re-install the package, specifying "s" when prompted to tell it to get the source distribution. For example, to remove the Fr and FrContrib packages (assumed here to be v6r15) and rebuild them from the source distribution:
ligotools_uninstall Fr v6r15
ligotools_uninstall FrContrib v6r15
ligotools_update Fr FrContrib
(When asked about each package, type 's' to get the source
distribution. It will build automatically after it is downloaded.)
A complete log of the prompts (in black), user input (in red), and diagnostic
messages (in green) for this
example may be found here.
To use the administration utilities ligotools_uninstall and ligotools_update, you must have write access to the $LIGOTOOLS directory. For more information about LIGOtools package management, see the web page for the ltadmin package and the "LIGOtools Administration Guide" link in the Documentation section of that web page.