OctApps

Welcome to OctApps, a library of Octave functions for continuous gravitational-wave data analysis.

Downloading

OctApps is hosted on GitHub. Please see the project homepage for instructions for checking out the repository with git clone.

Alternatively, a Docker image containing the latest version of OctApps can be built by running

$ docker build https://github.com/octapps/octapps.git

Dependencies

OctApps depends on the following packages for various purposes:

Package	Purpose	Debian/Ubuntu	MacOSX
GNU Core Utilities	Used to build OctApps	installed as standard	brew install coreutils
GNU Find Utilities	Used to build OctApps	installed as standard	brew install findutils
GNU Sed	Used to build OctApps	installed as standard	brew install gnu-sed
GNU Awk	Used to build OctApps	installed as standard	brew install gawk
GNU Make	Used to build OctApps	apt install make	brew install make
pkg-config	Used to build OctApps	apt install pkg-config	brew install pkg-config
Octave	Running OctApps	apt install octave	brew install octave
Octave development headers	Used to build extension modules	apt install liboctave-dev	brew install octave
SWIG	Used to build extension modules	apt install swig3.0	brew install swig
GNU Texinfo	Used to build HTML documentation	apt install texinfo	brew install texinfo
LSC Algorithm Library (LALSuite)	Continuous gravitational-wave functions require packages lal-octave, lalxml-octave, lalpulsar-octave, and lalapps	See project homepage for build instructions
GNU Scientific Library	Used by gsl module	apt install libgsl-dev	brew install gsl
Gnuplot	Used by ezprint() function	apt install gnuplot	brew install gnuplot
FFmpeg	Used by ezmovie() function	apt install ffmpeg	brew install ffmpeg
CFITSIO	Used by fitsread() function	apt install libcfitsio-dev	brew install cfitsio
bzip2	Used by SuperskyMetricsCache() function	apt install bzip2	brew install bzip2

Building

To use any OctApps functions with Octave, first run

$ make

to generate the user environment setup scripts, then either add

$ . <your-path-to>/octapps/octapps-user-env.sh

to your ~/.profile file for Bourne shells (e.g. bash), or

$ source <your-path-to>/octapps/octapps-user-env.csh

to your ~/.login file for C shells (e.g. tcsh). You will also need to re-run make after any new directories are added to OctApps.

Testing

To execute the OctApps test suite, consisting of tests embedded in Octave function files, run

$ make check

You can also run the test suite for specific functions files:

$ make check TESTS=runCode

$ make check TESTS=src/general/runCode.m

or specific directories:

$ make check TESTDIR=src/general

The OctApps test suite is regularly executed via GitHub Actions. Current build status: .

Documentation

A reference manual for OctApps in HTML format is regularly generated from the master branch on GitHub. It includes tutorials on several important features of OctApps, documentation for each function in the library, and example usages.

Documentation can also be obtained from within Octave on any OctApps function by running

$ octave:1> help <name-of-function>

Example usage for many OctApps functions can be found in the embedded tests, which can be printed using

$ octave:1> test <name-of-function> verbose

Contributing

Contributions to OctApps are welcome. Bug reports and other requests for support should be raised on the issue tracker on GitHub. Bug fixes and new contributions should be submitted as pull requests to the main OctApps repository. Documentation for OctApps is embedded in Octave function files, and is written in Texinfo format.

Acknowledgement

If you make use of OctApps, please cite our paper in the Journal of Open Source Software:

@article{octapps,
  author = {Karl Wette and Reinhard Prix and David Keitel and Matthew Pitkin and Christoph Dreissigacker and John T. Whelan and Paola Leaci},
  title = {{OctApps: a library of Octave functions for continuous gravitational-wave data analysis}},
  journal = {Journal of Open Source Software},
  year = {2018},
  volume = {3},
  number = {26},
  pages = {707},
  doi = {10.21105/joss.00707},
}