PhoSim Tutorial 1: How to Setup PhoSim

Getting the Code

To obtain the PhoSim package, download a tarball from

 https://bitbucket.org/phosim/phosim_release/downloads?tag=tags

These are the stable versions. We recommend downloading the most recent release. The major releases are labelled vX.Y and are released about twice a year.  The intermediate patches and bug fixes are labelled vX.Y.Z and are released less frequently, unless there is a major bug fix.

After downloading the PhoSim Release tarball, unpack it in the usual manner, e.g. 

Alternatively, you can download the entire git tree and use git commands as normal. This is only recommended if you are familiar with git.

The master branch is configured to be the most recent stable version (git checkout master) of the major releases. To get a particular version, you can use git checkout vX.Y.Z. You will want to use git pull and git pull --tags routinely. Generally, the revisions between the tags are not stable or tested, so it is probably simpler just to stick to the method above, but if you are very comfortable with git, this is an option.

Installing PhoSim

PhoSim can be installed on virtually any operating system. It is routinely tested on both MacOS (BSD Linux) and many different Linux installations. It can even be installed on Windows systems via CygWin or WSL. Given the large user base and its lightweight design philosophy, PhoSim should be able to work on any system with minimal effort.

If there are any issues, please file a ticket.

Once the directory is finished downloading and the hierarchy is in place. Go to the main phosim directory, /phosim_release/.

And configure the package is installed via:

Running configure will give you a prompt as such:

Option (a) to install cfitsio and fftw is the recommended option.  Simply type 'a' and it will install from the source. Alternatively, you can provide paths to existing installations for PhoSim to point to a specific installation.  You may need to install tkinter in order for the GUI to function, but the GUI is optional and not required.

To compile PhoSim, simply type "make", from the home PhoSim Directory /phosim_release/.

Generally, there should be minimal warnings and a successful compilation with the message "The Photon Simulator has been compiled successfully!". PhoSim does require a somewhat recent C++ compiler that has support for C++14 (usually, e.g., g++ > 5.0). At runtime, PhoSim will also require Python >= 2.6 for the multiprocessing module. 

Once your installation is successful, please proceed to another tutorial to begin using PhoSim!