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IRAF Community Distribution

IRAF maintained by the community

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Binary packages

Linux

Debian and derivatives (Ubuntu, Mint, Raspbian, …)

Debian 12 package Debian 13 package Raspbian Stable package Ubuntu 22.04 package Ubuntu 24.04 package

On Debian like systems, IRAF and xgterm are distributed in the standard package repositories and can be installed with the command

$ sudo apt install iraf xgterm

This also installs the NOAO package. Development tools (xc, mkpkg and development libraries) can be installed separately if needed with the package iraf-dev. PyRAF is available as python3-pyraf package, and ximtool as ximtool package.

There are also some external packages available:

The Debian Astro Pure Blend metapackage astro-iraf installs all available IRAF packages, so

$ sudo apt install astro-iraf

provides a simple way to install a complete IRAF system on Debian and derived distributions. The DS9 tool which many prefer over ximtool can be installed as saods9 package.

Other distributions

Mageia cauldron package RPM Sphere package AUR package

On Mageia Linux, IRAF can also be directly installed from the package repositories. Packages for Fedora Linux are available from the RPM Sphere third-party repository.

Please contact us if you want to help packaging for any Linux versions.

macOS

IRAF@mac release

For macOS, please download the installer (~75 MB) for your system:

As the software is not signed with an Apple certificate, you need to remove the quarantine attribute on the command line from the downloaded file before installing it:

$ xattr -c Downloads/iraf-*.pkg

After this, you can open the installer package by clicking on the icon.

welcome window

Follow now the installer instructions by clicking on Continue. In the Installation Type screen, adjust the list of packages for your needs. Aside from the main IRAF package and X11IRAF, a selection of external packages is offered. The st4gem package offers a number of tasks from the discontinued STSDAS package and can be used as an alternative.

installation type window

IRAF will be installed under /usr/local/lib/iraf/ and the installer will ask you for the root password of the machine. At the end you will see a screen like this:

summary window

If X11IRAF was selected, two new applications, xgterm and ximtool are installed:

X11IRAF applications

For these applications, you will need an X server (XQuartz). As an alternative to the ximtool image display program, most people install SAOImageDS9. For development, the XCode command line tools are needed.

Installation from source

GitHub release

System Requirements and Dependencies

The distributed binaries require the readline or libedit, and zlib libraries to be installed.

On Debian and its derivatives (Ubuntu, Mint, Devuan, Raspbian etc.):

$ sudo apt install gcc make flex bison zlib1g-dev libreadline-dev

On Fedora and its derivatives (Redhat, Scientific Linux etc.)

$ sudo dnf install gcc make perl flex byacc zlib-devel readline-devel

On MacOS X, you need to have the XCode tools installed. If you haven’t, you can install them with:

$ xcode-select --install

Click “Install” to download and install Xcode Command Line Tools.

Download and unpack the IRAF Distribution

IRAF v2.18 source code is available from Github at

https://github.com/iraf-community/iraf/archive/refs/tags/v2.18.tar.gz

The source distribution file is built as a tarball with the package name and version as base directory. Thus, distribution files can be unpacked with the command

$ tar zxf /<path>/v2.18.tar.gz
$ cd iraf-2.18/

Alternatively, the current development version can be cloned as a git repository from Github (assumed that you have an account):

$ git clone git@github.com:iraf-community/iraf.git
$ cd iraf/

Keep in mind that this installs the latest development version, which may contain new bugs and other obstacles.

Build from Sources

Now you can compile IRAF on your system with the command

$ make 2>&1 | tee build.log

The following IRAF architectures are supported:

Architecture Operating system Supported CPU types
linux64 Linux 64 bit x86_64, arm64, mips64, ppc64, riscv64, alpha
linux Linux 32 bit i386, x32, arm, mips
macos64 macOS 64 bit arm64
macintel macOS 64 bit x86_64
macosx macOS 32 bit i386
freebsd64 FreeBSD 64 bit x86_64
freebsd FreeBSD 32 bit i386, arm
hurd64 GNU HURD 64 bit x86_64
hurd GNU HURD 32 bit i386

Note that Cygwin and big endian architectures like macosx/ppc are not supported anymore.

Test the Build

IRAF comes with a small set of basic tests to ensure that the build works fine. To execute the tests, run:

$ make test

The output should look like

ecl.e: README.md
ecl.e: files.md ......
ecl.e: images.imcoords.md ...........
ecl.e: images.imfilter.md .x............
ecl.e: images.imfit.md ...
ecl.e: images.imgeom.md ........
ecl.e: images.immatch.md ..
ecl.e: lists.md .......
ecl.e: noao.astutil.md ........
ecl.e: noao.digiphot.photcal.md .
ecl.e: numerical-recipes.md ..........
ecl.e: os.md ..
ecl.e: programming.md ............
ecl.e: sys.vops.md .
ecl.e: test-syntax.md ...xs.
ecl.e: testproc.md ..........................
ecl.e: utilities.nttools.md ..............
Test summary:  128 passed
   1 skipped
   2 xfailed

Note that xfailed (x) are expected failures, which one does not need to worry about.

For details of the tests, see the file test/README.md.

Install the software at its final place

There are two options to install the build: system wide (by default under /usr/local/lib/iraf), or in-place for the current user only. If you have root (sudo, admin) access, the system wide installation is the preferred option.

System wide installation

The system wide installation copies everything that is needed to /usr/local/lib/iraf, making it available for all users of the computer. For this, do the following command:

$ sudo make install

This also installs the links required to run iraf or its commands to /usr/local/bin. After the installation finishes, one can directly start using

$ mkiraf
$ ecl

Note that the mkiraf command is now optional if a local parameter storage is not needed. Setting the iraf environment variable is not needed to run the system.

In-place installation

The in-place installation just configures the built system in its current location.

$ make inplace

This also installs the links required to run iraf or its commands to ~/.iraf/bin. This directory should be added to your PATH variable so that the IRAF commands can be found by their name. Different to previous versions, the installation does not touch your login files; you should edit these files manually to add the path if needed. Setting the iraf environment variable is not needed to run the system.

Customization variables

Build customization

The build using make can be customized by a number of environment variables:

Installation customization

The installation using make install recognizes the following environment variables: