Installation & Run¶

Usage and publication policy¶

When using CARACal please be aware of and adhere to the CARACal publication policy.

Requirements¶

Python 3.5 or higher.
Container technology of your choice. It can be one of the following:
- Docker;
- Singularity 3.5 - 3.9 (nearly all functionality available for > 2.6.0-dist, see here for further information)
- Podman (currently not fully supported).

Manual installation¶

We strongly recommend and describe an installation using a Python3 virtual environment. Only try outside a virtual environment if you know what you are doing. Any name as ${name} occurring in the description below can be chosen arbitrarily. If it symbolises directories or files, those directories or files should exist and the user should have write acccess.

Choose the name of the virtual environment ${caracal-venv}. Then:

python3 -m venv ${caracal-venv}
# OR, if the command above does not work
#virtualenv -p python3 ${caracal-venv}

source ${caracal-venv}/bin/activate
pip install -U pip setuptools wheel

# CARACal stable release
pip install -U caracal
# OR CARACal developer version
#pip install -U git+https://github.com/ska-sa/caracal.git#egg=caracal

(Ignore any error messages concerning pyregion.)

In case you are not carrying out a fresh installation, remove earlier Stimela images with:

stimela clean -ac

If using Singularity, choose a pull folder ${singularity_pull_folder}, where the Singularity images are stored and define an environment variable by adding this in the rc file of your shell (e.g. .bashrc):

export SINGULARITY_PULLFOLDER=${WORKSPACE_ROOT}/singularity_images

and run:

stimela pull -s

If using Podman (currently not fully supported):

stimela pull -p

Installation with the caratekit.sh script¶

Download the installation script caratekit.sh . Choose the parent directory ${workspace} and the name of the CARACal directory ${caracal_dir}. Any name as ${name} occurring in the description below can be chosen arbitrarily. If it symbolises directories or files, those directories or files should exist and the user should have write acccess.

If using Docker:

caratekit.sh -ws ${workspace} -cr -di -ct ${caracal_dir} -rp install -f -kh

If using Singularity:

caratekit.sh -ws ${workspace} -cr -si -ct ${caracal_testdir} -rp install -f -kh

Installation on ILIFU slurm environment¶

The installation of CARACal on ilifu has been tried and tested on the Ubuntu 20.0 operating system, although, it should also work on other OS versions. On the login node, follow these instuctions:

cd /path/to/working/area
module add python/3.9.4
python3 -m venv <venv-name>
source <venv-name>/bin/activate
pip install -U pip setuptools wheel
git clone https://github.com/caracal-pipeline/caracal.git
pip install -U -e caracal
deactivate

where /path/to/working/area is the actual path to the directory where you wish to install CARACal. In principle, this can also be done in the Slurm environment of ILIFU by submitting an sbatch script. If you prefer working with the released version of CARACal, please skip the step:

git clone https://github.com/caracal-pipeline/caracal.git

and modify the next step to:

pip install -U caracal

NB: The stimela singularity images needed for CARACal are stored in this location:

/software/astro/caracal/

where you can access the latest version of the images, for example, /software/astro/caracal/STIMELA_IMAGES_1.7.0.

Run¶

If you installed CARACal manually, activate the virtual environment with:

source ${caracal-venv}/bin/activate

If you installed CARACal with the caratekit.sh script, activate the virtual environment with:

source ${workspace}/${caracal_dir}/caracal_venv/bin/activate

If using Docker run CARACal with:

caracal -c ${your-configuration-file}

If using Singularity run CARACal with:

caracal -ct singularity -c ${your-configuration-file}

For more detailed installation instructions, trouble-shooting tips and a full user manual please see caracal.readthedocs.io.

Known and new issues¶

We encourage users who experience problems installing or running CARACal to check for known issues or open a new issue at our GitHub issues page. When opening a new issue, please include your installation type (e.g., Docker, Singularity), software version (both CARACal and Stimela), CARACal configuration file, and CARACal log files.