Ongoing modernization of GILDAS software

The Grenoble Image and Line Data Analysis Software (GILDAS) architecture and distribution are undergoing important changes. The main underlying idea is to use standard, powerful and free tools to simplify the maintenance and installation of the software:

• The old home-made pre-processor (named ``fpre'') has been replaced by the standard C pre-processor.
• GNU make is used as the building tool. This choice considerably simplified the new makefile writing but it imposes the user to install GNU make. This limitation should be relaxed in the medium term as we go to the usual ``configure/make/make install'' scheme.
• CVS has been chosen as the GILDAS new control version system.

We used the opportunity of those changes to clean the sources:

• Hardware (especially the access to binary files) dependencies have mostly been grouped into a dedicated library.
• Another library is dedicated to operating system and compiler dependencies.
• A new architecture for the whole GILDAS tree has been chosen and is being implemented, with the aim of increasing the clarity and the modularity.

These changes are in the testing phase and will become permanent in the next few months. In this modernization process, it has been decided to:

• Definitely drop the VAX-VMS support. The main target system of GILDAS is now LINUX.
• To allow FORTRAN-90 developments. For the time being, we provide the possibility to compile all the GILDAS software (with the note-worthy exception of MAPPING) with the GNU FORTRAN-77. But there is absolutely no warranty that this possibility will be supported in the future. Please note that a non-commercial version of the Intel FORTRAN-90 compiler for LINUX is currently available for academic institutions.

Most of the others changes should be fully transparent for the normal users. However they affect the GILDAS software developments. Please contact us for more details to adapt you own software developments in GILDAS to the new system (gildas@iram.fr).

Jerôme PETY, Frédéric GUETH and Stéphane GUILLOTEAU