This page describes how to build the new version of the makems tool (repository version 7162 and later, note that repository path is now trunk/makems.) Earlier versions (repository path trunk/MakeMS) are described in BuildingOldMakeMs.

Prerequisites

* casacore

* The Boost.Preprocessor library (http://www.boost.org, Debian/Ubuntu packagage libboost-dev).

* cmake 2.6 or higher

If you've built casacore and Timba, then you probably have all prerequisites installed (except possibly boost).

Checking out makems

makems resides in a separate directory on our Subversion server. Check out as follows:

$ svn co svn://lofar9.astron.nl/var/svn/repos/trunk/makems

or (if you have a lofar9 account):

$ svn co svn+ssh://lofar9.astron.nl/var/svn/repos/trunk/makems

Building

Refer to makems/README_build.txt. Here's a copy of the readme as of r7162, please check the file itself for more up-to-date information.

Building the makems tool
========================

Prerequisites: a subset of the MeqTrees stuff (cmake 2.6, blitz, etc.)

The build, in a nutshell:

$ cd $HOME
$ svn co svn://lofar9.astron.nl/var/svn/repos/trunk/makems  # or svn+ssh://
$ cd makems/LOFAR
$ mkdir -p build/gnu_opt
$ cd build/gnu_opt
$ cmake -DCMAKE_MODULE_PATH:PATH=$HOME/makems/LOFAR/CMake \
  -DUSE_LOG4CPLUS=OFF -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF ../..
$ make

The executable is then built as build/gnu_opt/CEP/MS/makems.

Using the makems tool
=====================

makems.pdf describes use of the tool (ignore the parts about building a
distributed MS, as we compile without this capability.) In a nutshell, there is
a makems.cfg file, and an ANTENNA table (referenced from that file.) For an
example, go into MakeMS/examples, and run "makems makems.cfg". This will create
an MS called test.MS_p0.

Running makems

You need a file called makems.cfg in the current directory. This describes the various attributes of the MS. Examples are available under makems/examples.

You also need an ANTENNA table giving antenna positions (makems.cfg tells the tool which table to use). You can copy an ANTENNA table from any existing MS. Alternatively, you can create this table from scratch using the pyrap_tables interface -- I'm hoping someone will make a script for this and place it into the waterhole soon...

Note that makems can split MSs into chunks of time (see the NParts parameter in makems.cfg.) Even if you don't use this feature (NParts=1) and make only one MS, it is still going to be called *.MS_p1 ('p1' stands for part 1), so you might want to rename it to *.MS.