Getting and Installing IRATE
============================

Getting IRATE
-------------

You can get the latest version of the IRATE format from `bitbucket <http://bitbucket.org/>`_ 
at the `IRATE-format <http://bitbucket.org/eteq/irate-format/overview>`_  
project page.  You'll need to install `mercurial <http://mercurial.selenic.com/>`_
and just run the command at the top of the project page that begins with ``hg clone``. 
Once a release is ready, it will appear on `PyPI <http://pypi.python.org/pypi>`_

Installing
----------

Of course, you must have `python <http://www.python.org/>`_ installed before you
can do anything with IRATE, although most operating systems other than Windows
have it installed automatically.

Once you have a copy of the IRATE source code, you will need to be sure you
install the HDF5 libraries (libhdf5) which can be found on the `HDF5 web site
<http://www.hdfgroup.org/downloads/index.html>`_, although it's usually much
easier to just install using a package manager if your OS has one.  IRATE 
requires at least v1.8 of the HDF5 format.


Additionally, if you intend to convert Tipsy binary format files to IRATE, you
will need to have <Cython `http://cython.org/`>_ installed before you install
IRATE.


Two other packages are needed by IRATE - `h5py
<http://code.google.com/p/h5py/>`_, and `numpy <http://numpy.scipy.org/>`_. If
you so desire, you can install these yourself beforehand, although the install
process for IRATE should download and install it for you

Once you have the requirements satisfied, execute the following command in the 
IRATE source code directory::

    python setup.py install
    
    
Note that on most unix-like systems, you will have to run this command as root,
or (e.g. Ubuntu) include the command ``sudo`` in front of it. This should
install IRATE, and you can go ahead and use any of the scripts or library
components.