ctools information

• Version: 2.1.0.dev (12 May 2023)
• GammaLib dependency: 2.1.0.dev

License information

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

What's new in this release?

See the files NEWS and ChangeLog.

What are the ctools anyway?

ctools is a software package for the scientific analysis of astronomical gamma-ray data. The software comprises an extensive set of tools for the analysis of data from existing and future Cherenkov telescopes, including H.E.S.S., VERITAS, MAGIC and CTA. ctools supports also the analysis of data from CGRO/COMPTEL, Fermi/LAT and INTEGRAL/SPI, enabling the exploration of the full gamma-ray energy band, spanning from hundreds of keV to hundreds of TeV.

The following tools and scripts are generic analysis utilities:

ctbutterfly   - create a butterfly
cterror       - likelihood profile error estimation
ctmapcube     - generate sky map cube
ctlike        - maximum likelihood model fitting
cttsmap       - generate a TS map
ctulimit      - compute upper limits
cscaldb       - lists available instrument response functions
csinfo        - checks ctools and GammaLib installations
cslightcrv    - computes light curve
csmodelinfo   - shows model container content
csmodelmerge  - merges several model containers into one file
csmodelselect - select models from model definition file
csmodelsois   - generate map cube from subset of models
csobsinfo     - shows observation container content
csspec        - computes spectral points
cstsdist      - generates Test Statistic distribution
cstsmapmerge  - merges slices from Test Statistic map computations
cstsmapsplit  - creates commands to split the Test Statistic map computations
csworkflow    - run an analysis workflow

The following tools and script support the analysis of CTA and IACT data:

ctbin         - event binning
ctcubemask    - mask bins in binned analysis
ctexpcube     - generate an exposure cube
ctpsfcube     - generate a PSF cube
ctedispcube   - generate energy dispersion cube
ctbkgcube     - generate a background cube
ctfindvar     - search for source variability
ctmodel       - generation of model counts map
ctobssim      - simulation of CTA observations
ctphase       - computes the phase of each event
ctprob        - computes event probability for a given model
ctselect      - event selection
ctskymap      - Sky mapping tool
csbkgmodel    - generates background model for 3D analysis
csebins       - generates energy boundaries for stacked analysis
csobsdef      - generates observation definition file
csobsselect   - select observations from observation definition file
csphagen      - generates PHA, ARF, RMF files based on source/background regions
csphasecrv    - computes phase curve
cspull        - generates pull distribution
csresmap      - generates residual map
csresspec     - generates residual spectrum
csroot2caldb  - creates a caldb entry from a ROOT file
csscs         - Performs spectral component separation
cssens        - computes CTA sensitivity
cssrcdetect   - detects sources in sky map
csviscube     - computes visibility cube

The following scripts support the management of an IACT database:

csobs2caldb - Creates a caldb entry from an input observation
csiactdata  - Shows information about IACT data available on the user machine
csiactobs   - Generates observation definition file for IACT data from observation IDs
csfindobs   - Generates a list of IACT observation IDs
csiactcopy  - Copies IACT data from one location to another

The following scripts support COMPTEL science analysis:

comlixfit    - Fit model to data using SRCLIX algorithm
comlixmap    - Create TS map using SRCLIX algorithm
comobsadd    - Combine observations
comobsback   - Generate background model for COMPTEL observations
comobsbin    - Bin COMPTEL observations
comobsmodel  - Generate model for binned COMPTEL observations
comobsres    - Generate residuals of COMPTEL observations
comobsselect - Select observations from COMPTEL database
comobssim    - Simulate COMPTEL observations
comsrcdetect - Detect source in TS map

Web sites

http://cta.irap.omp.eu/ctools - for ctools users https://cta-redmine.irap.omp.eu/projects/ctools - for ctools development

Prerequisites

ctools require GammaLib. Please refer to http://cta.irap.omp.eu/gammalib for instructions about how to install GammaLib.

Once GammaLib is properly installed, make sure that you added the setup script to your .bashrc or $HOME/.profile script:

export GAMMALIB=/usr/local/gamma
source $GAMMALIB/bin/gammalib-init.sh

If you use C shell or a variant then add the following to your .cshrc or .tcshrc script:

setenv GAMMALIB /usr/local/gamma
source $GAMMALIB/bin/gammalib-init.csh

If you have installed GammaLib in another directory than /usr/local/gamma, please adapt the path correspondingly.

If you really insist, you may install ctools in a directory different to that hosting GammaLib, but we highly recommend to install both packages together.

Conda Installation

The easiest is to install ctools via conda. This also takes care of the installation of GammaLib. Assuming that you have installed anaconda, type the following:

$ conda config --append channels conda-forge
$ conda config --append channels cta-observatory
$ conda install ctools

Linux Installation

To build and install ctools, simply type the following:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check
$ make install

If the folder does not contain any configure file, please run

$ ./autogen.sh 

before invoking configure.

By default ctools installs itself in /usr/local/gamma. If you need to install ctools in a different location or in your home directory, use the --prefix option to ./configure. For example:

$ ./configure --prefix=/home/yourname/projects
$ make
$ make check
$ make install

The file INSTALL details more about using configure. Also try

$ ./configure --help.

The make check command will run an extensive unit test to verify that ctools was correctly built. Make sure that all tests were successful.

Macintosh OS Installation

ctools builds and installs seamlessly on all Mac OS starting from at least Mac OS 10.6.

On older systems you may use Mac specific configure options:

$ ./configure --enable-universalsdk[=PATH]

creates a universal build of ctools. The optional argument specifies which MacOS SDK should be used to perform the build. This defaults to /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.10.4u.sdk. Specify / when building on a 10.5 system or higher, especially when building 64-bit code.

$ ./configure --with-univeral-archs=VALUE

specifies the kind of universal build that should be created. Possible values are: 32-bit, 3-way, intel or all. By default, a 32-bit build will be made. This option is only valid when --enable-universalsdk is specified.

These options are in particular needed if your Python architecture differs from the default architecture of your system. To examine the Python architecture you may type:

$ file `which python`

which will return the architectures that are compiled in the Mach-0 executable:

i386    32-bit intel
ppc     32-bit powerpc
ppc64   64-bit powerpc
x86_64  64-bit intel

If Python is 32-bit (ppc, i386) but the compiler produces by default 64-bit code (ppc64, x86_64), the Python module will not work. Using

$ ./configure --enable-universalsdk=/

will force a universal 32-bit build which creates code for ppc and i386. If on the other hand Python is 64-bit (ppc64, x86_64) but the compiler produces by default 32-bit code (ppc, i386), the option

$ ./configure --enable-universalsdk=/ --with-univeral-archs=3-way

will generate a universal build which contains 32-bit and 64-bit code.

BSD Installation

ctools has been successfully installed on FreeBSD. Make sure that you use gmake for building of the software. Otherwise follow the Linux installation instructions above.

Solaris Installation

ctools compile on Solairs, but there is an issue with using it as a shared library (see "Known problems" below).

Windows Installation

On Windows ctools needs to be installed into a virtual machine running a Linux distribution.

Testing

If you want to test ctools before installation, type the following:

$ make check

Setting up your environment

Before using ctools you have to setup some environment variables. This will be done automatically by an initialisation script that will be installed in the bin directory.

Assuming that you have installed ctools in the default directory /usr/local/gamma you need to add the following to your $HOME/.bashrc or $HOME/.profile script on a Linux machine:

export CTOOLS=/usr/local/gamma
source $CTOOLS/bin/ctools-init.sh

If you use C shell or a variant then add the following to your $HOME/.cshrc or $HOME/.tcshrc script:

setenv CTOOLS /usr/local/gamma
source $CTOOLS/bin/ctools-init.csh

Getting started

See the online documentation at http://cta.irap.omp.eu/ctools.

Documentation

The doc directory (usually at /usr/local/gamma/share/doc/ctools)
contains the most recent set of updated documentation for this release. A detailed documentation can be created by typing:

$ make doc

before installing the library. Two types of documentation exist:

• code documentation
• user documentation

Code documentation is created using Doxygen. You need Doxygen on your system to generate the code documentation. This includes man pages.
Doxygen can be obtained from http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/.

User documentation is created using Sphinx. You need Sphinx on your system to generate the user documentation. Sphinx can be obtained from http://sphinx-doc.org/install.html.

Bug reports

To report or search for bugs, please use the ctools Bug Tracker at https://cta-redmine.irap.omp.eu/projects/ctools. Before using the tracker, please read https://cta-redmine.irap.omp.eu/projects/ctools/wiki/Submission_guidelines

Known problems

Solaris

Although ctools compile on Solaris using the Sun compiler, there are problems with global symbols in the shared GammaLib library that prevent the model registry to work correctly. Furthermore, GammaLib is not able to catch its own exceptions, which prevents the FITS interface to work correctly. Possible it will work using gcc on Solaris, yet this has not been tested so far.

Contact

To get in touch with the ctools developers and to contribute to the project please contact Juergen Knoedlseder jurgen.knodlseder@irap.omp.eu.