Installing a Pre-compiled Binary (Linux)

By far the easiest way to install and use Galacticus on Linux is to use a pre-compiled binary. For macOS, see the macOS binary instructions.

To do this:

  • download and unpack the source and datasets that are needed at run-time:

wget https://github.com/galacticusorg/galacticus/archive/master.zip -O galacticus.zip
wget https://github.com/galacticusorg/datasets/archive/master.zip -O datasets.zip
unzip galacticus.zip
unzip datasets.zip
mv galacticus-master galacticus
mv datasets-master datasets

  • download and unpack the tools that are needed at run-time:

cd datasets
wget https://github.com/galacticusorg/galacticus/releases/download/bleeding-edge/tools.tar.bz2
tar xvfj tools.tar.bz2

  • download the pre-compiled binary, put it inside the galacticus directory and give it executable permissions:

cd ../galacticus
wget https://github.com/galacticusorg/galacticus/releases/download/bleeding-edge/Galacticus.exe
chmod u=wrx Galacticus.exe

  • set environment variables to indicate the locations at which you downloaded the source and data:

export GALACTICUS_EXEC_PATH=/path/to/galacticus
export GALACTICUS_DATA_PATH=/path/to/datasets

Note

Galacticus needs to write some data files to disk at run time. Usually these are written to $GALACTICUS_DATA_PATH/dynamic/. If you do not have write permission to that location, you should set the environment variable GALACTICUS_DYNAMIC_DATA_PATH to a path where dynamically-generated files can be written.

Note

The run-time tools (CAMB, CLASS, Cloudy, FSPS, RecFast, AxionCAMB, and mangle) are, by default, stored under the dynamic data path alongside regenerable data. You can relocate them by setting the environment variable GALACTICUS_TOOLS_PATH to a separate directory. This is useful if you want to keep the (immutable) pre-built tools apart from regenerable cache data — for example so that the cache can be cleared without removing the tools, or to share a read-only tools directory between installs. When unset, GALACTICUS_TOOLS_PATH defaults to the dynamic data path, so existing setups are unaffected.

You can then run a quick test model using:

./Galacticus.exe parameters/quickTest.xml

Notes for WSL

We have successfully run Galacticus on Windows using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), version 2, but found that version 1 did not allow Galacticus to run successfully. Therefore, to run Galacticus on WSL you should check that you are running version 2 of WSL and, if necessary, upgrade to version 2. Details on how to do this are available here.