Check the file 'doc/flask_manual.pdf' for all the information about FLASK. Paper describing the code: Xavier et al. 2016, MNRAS Vol. 459, p. 3693 (arXiv:1602.08503)

Prerequisites:

FLASK requires the following software to be pre-installed on your machine:

• Linux operating system
• OpenMP (for parallelisation)
• HEALPix (for mapping the sky): Instructions for compiling Flask and pyFlask for healpix 3.60+ can be found bellow.
• GNU Scientific Library (GSL)
• CFITSIO (to work with FITS format files)

How to compile:

For Healpix 3.60+

Because pyFlask uses shared libraries at the moment, this requires Healpix and Libsharp to be re-compiled using the flag -fpic to create these files. "Simply" re-run healpix's ./configure to re-compile both libraries adding the -fpic flag to both. In case pyFlask is not necessary, you can avoid re-compiling Healpix and libsharp by making only the C++ part of Flask (see bellow).

Flask Compilation

Edit the Makefile in the src/ subdirectory according to your machine's requirements. If you are using a healpix version bellow 3.60, please pay attention to the Makefile. In particular, the HEALDIR variable must be set to the location of Healpix installation on your machine.

From Linux command prompt:

$ cd <Root directory of Flask>/src/
$ make

This will create a linux binary that can be run directly from the command prompt. It will be placed in the subdirectory that is defined through the variable BIN in the Makefile. This is referred to as "Flask".

pyFlask Compilation

Edit the setup.cfg configuration file according to your machine's requirements. In particular, the healpix_dir variable must be set to the location of a Healpix installation on your machine. Once everything is set up, you can install the pyFlask module as usual with pip:

$ cd <Root directory of Flask>/
$ pip3 install .

Alternatively, you can build the pyFlask module in the working directory:

$ cd <Root directory of Flask>/
$ python3 setup.py build_ext --inplace

This will build the Python module, which is placed in the py subdirectory.

How to run the standard example:

To run Flask

Suppose:

BIN=<Root directory of Flask>/bin

Then:

$ cd <Root directory of Flask>/
$ bin/flask example.config

If you want to define, for example, the input parameter RNDSEED=402 at the command prompt, then Flask should be run from the command prompt as:

$ bin/flask example.config RNDSEED: 402

To call pyFlask

>>> import pyFlask
>>> pyFlask.flask(["flask","example.config"])

If you want to define, for example, the input parameter RNDSEED=402 from within Python environment, then pyFlask should be invoked from Python as:

>>> pyFlask.flask(["flask","example.ini","RNDSEED:","402"])

If pyFlask was build in place, then you need to invoke Python in the py subdirectory in order for import pyFlask to find the module.