Table of Contents
This section descibes how to install the NeXus API and details the requirements. The NeXus API is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser Public License.
The source code and binary versions for some popular platforms can be found on
http://download.nexusformat.org/kits/. Up to date instructions can be found on the Wiki
In case you need help feel free to contact the
nexus mailing list.
Since NeXus uses HDF as the main underlying binary format, it is necessary first to
install the HDF subroutine libraries and include files before compiling the NeXus API. It
is not usually necessary to download the HDF source code since precompiled object libraries
exist for a variety of operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and various
other flavors of Unix. Check the HDF web pages for more information: http://www.hdfgroup.org/
Packages for HDF4 and HDF5 are available for both Fedora (hdf, hdf5, hdf-devel, hdf5-devel) and Ubuntu/Debian (libhdf4g, libhdf5).
The NeXus API also supports
using XML as the underlying on-disk format. This uses the Mini-XML library, developed by
Michael Sweet, which is also available as a precompiled binary library for several operating
systems. Check the Mini-XML web pages
for more information: http://www.minixml.org/
Packages for MXML are available for both Fedora (mxml, mxml-devel) and Ubuntu/Debian (libmxml1).
An installation kit (source or binary) can be downloaded from:
http://download.nexusformat.org/kits/
A NeXus binary RPM (nexus-*.i386.rpm) contains ready compiled NeXus libraries whereas a source RPM (nexus-*.src.rpm) needs to be compiled into a binary RPM before it can be installed. In general, a binary RPM is installed using the command
rpm -Uvh file.i386.rpm
or, to change installation location from the default (e.g. /usr/local) area, using
rpm -Uvh --prefix /alternative/directory file.i386.rpm
If the binary RPMS are not the correct architecture for you (e.g. you need x86_64 rather than i386) or the binary RPM requires libraries (e.g. HDF4) that you do not have, you can instead rebuild a source RPM (.src.rpm) to generate the correct binary RPM for you machine. Download the source RPM file and then run
rpmbuild --rebuild file.src.rpm
This should generate a binary RPM file which you can install as above. Be careful if
you think about specifying an alternative buildroot for rpmbuild by using
--buildroot option as the "buildroot" directory tree will get remove (so
--buildroot / is a really bad idea). Only change buildroot it if the default
area turns out not to be big enough to compile the package.
If you are using Fedora, then you can install all the dependencies by typing
yum install hdf hdf-devel hdf5 hdf5-devel mxml mxml-devel
A Windows MSI based installation kit is available and can be downloaded from:http://download.nexusformat.org/kits/windows/
An installation disk image (.dmg) can be downloaded from:http://download.nexusformat.org/kits/macosx/