General Information About LIGOtools

LIGOtools is a project to collect various LIGO/LSC software tools into one place, to encourage the sharing of useful tools among LIGO/LSC members. This web site contains software organized into "packages" for downloading and installation. A general effort is being made to minimize prerequisites and compiler dependences, so that in most cases installation should be quick and painless (we hope). In addition, this web site serves as a central clearinghouse for documentation and other useful information.

The basic philosophy of LIGOtools is to make all executable programs available in a single bin directory, all user-linkable libraries in a single lib directory with all the include files in a single include directory, all Matlab scripts in a single matlab directory, etc. (Actually, the real files are kept with each package, and symbolic links are used to make everything appear to be in a single directory.) Thus, adding the single LIGOtools bin directory to your PATH environment variable gives you access to all current and future LIGOtools programs.

A script called ligotools_update is provided to check for new packages, or new versions of existing packages, and to automatically download and install them, so routine administration should be simple.