The MagAO-X Software System

Handbook: https://magao-x.org/docs/handbook/ | C++ docs:

This is the software which runs the MagAO-X ExAO system.

1 Dependencies

1. mxlib (https://github.com/jaredmales/mxlib). For a MagAO-X machine change the prefix to /usr/local in the mxlib install
2. libudev (for introspective device discovery). Get from package manager.
3. zlib (compression for INDI). Get from package manager:
   • zlib-devel [centOS-7]
   • zlib1g-dev [ubuntu]
4. flatbuffers (https://google.github.io/flatbuffers/flatbuffers_guide_building.html) To build and install the flatc compiler and install the include files in /usr/local:

   $ cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
   $ make
   $ sudo make install
   

2 Software Configuration

For a standard build, nothing needs to be done here. However, various defaults can be changed with macros. To override at build time, the following macros can be redefined in local/config.mk. For example to change the MAGAOX_env_path environment variable, one could add

CXXFLAGS += -DMAGAOX_env_path="/my/magaox/path"

to local/config.mk.

2.1 Environment Variables

These are defined in libMagAOX/common/environment.hpp. They do not need to be set, but can be used to override relevant defaults.

• MAGAOX_env_path, the name of the environment variable holding the base path to the MagAOX system directories. Default = "MagAOX_PATH"

• MAGAOX_env_config, the name of the environment variable holding the relative path to the config files. Default = "MagAOX_CONFIG".

2.2 Default Values

These are values which might be changed for different components. These are defined in libMagAOX/common/defaults.hpp. They do not normally need to be changed, but these macros can be used to override relevant defaults.

MAGAOX_default_writePause

MAGAOX_default_max_logSize

MAGAOX_default_loopPause

2.3 Config Values

These are values which should change for all components of MagAO-X. These are defined in libMagAOX/common/config.hpp. They do not normally need to be changed for a typical build, but these macros can be used to override relevant defaults.

MAGAOX_logExt

MAGAOX_RT_SCHED_POLICY is the real-time scheduling policy. The result is SCHED_FIFO.

2.4 Paths

These are defined in libMagAOX/common/paths.hpp. They do not normally need to be changed, but these macros can be used to override the relevant defaults.

• MAGAOX_path The path to the MagAO-X system files This directory will have subdirectories including config, log, and sys directories.

• MAGAOX_configRelPath This is the subdirectory for configuration files.

• MAGAOX_globalConfig The filename for the global configuration file. Will be looked for in the config/ subdirectory.

• MAGAOX_logRelPath This is the subdirectory for logs.

• MAGAOX_sysRelPath This is the subdirectory for the system status files.

• MAGAOX_secretsRelPath This is the subdirectory for secrets.

• MAGAOX_driverRelPath This is the subdirectory for the INDI drivers.

• MAGAOX_driverFIFORelPath This is the subdirectory for the INDI driver FIFOs.

3 Building

Typing make in the MagAOX top-level directory will build the entire system.

Each app (subfolders of the apps directory) and each utilitiy (subfolders of the utils directory) have a Makefile. Typing make in any of those folders should build just that component, along with any dependencies (usually including libMagAOX).

Note the difference between the apps and utils components, is that upon install MagAO-X Applications get setuid, whereas the utilities do not.

Some notes:

• libMagAOX (part of this repository) is a c++ header-only library. It is compiled into a pre-compiled-header (PCH), managed by the build system. Any changes to libMagAOX should trigger a re-compile of the PCH, and of any apps or utils depending on it.

• Allowing setuid for RT priority handling, access to ttys and FIFOs, etc., requires hardcoding LD_LIBRARY_PATH at build time. This is done in the makefiles, and so should be transparent.

• Install requires root privileges.

3.1 Selective Build

It is sometimes necessary or desired to not build some parts of the system. For instance on a machine on which not all dependencies are installed. The make files allow the following to be turned off

CACAO

To prevent linking against the CACAO library, define CACAO=false in local/common.mk. Note that this has not been tested in a long time and will probably faile completely.

EDT

To prevent linking against the EDT framegrabber library, define EDT=false in local/common.mk. This will prevent building the ocam2KCtrl and andorCtrl apps.

PICam

To prevent linking against the Princeton Instruments PICam library, define PICAM=false in local/common.mk. This will prevent building the picamCtrl app.

Pylon

To prevent linking against the Basler Pylon library, define Pylon=false in local/common.mk. This will prevent building the baslerCtrl app.

4 Software Install

The software install process (from BIOS setup to building the MagAO-X software) is described in detail in setup/README.md. To the extent practicable, this is automated by the scripts in setup/ that take over after CentOS is installed.

Directory structure

Directory	Description
/opt/MagAOX	MagAOX system directory
/opt/MagAOX/bin	Contains all applications
/opt/MagAOX/calib	magao-x/calib repo for instrument calibration files
/opt/MagAOX/config	magao-x/config repo for instrument config files
/opt/MagAOX/drivers	Symlinks for INDI
/opt/MagAOX/drivers/fifos	FIFOs for INDI
/opt/MagAOX/logs	Directory where logs are written by the applications
/opt/MagAOX/rawimages	Directory where raw images are written by the applications
/opt/MagAOX/secrets	Directory containing device passwords, etc.
/opt/MagAOX/source	Directory containing clones of this repo, cacao-org/cacao, jaredmales/mxlib , jaredmales/milkzmq
/opt/MagAOX/sys	Directory for application status files, e.g. PID lock-files
/opt/MagAOX/vendor	Vendor software packages (anything we aren't frequent committers to ourselves)

This directory structure is #define-ed in libMagAOX/common/defaults.hpp. System directories are created and permissions are set by setup/steps/ensure_dirs_and_perms.sh. If permissions get out of whack, it is safe to re-run that script.

On install, symlinks are made for utility executables from /usr/local/bin to /opt/MagAOX/bin.

5 Documentation

The code is more-or-less carefully documented with doxygen

• [] Complete doxygen doc system
• [] Script construction of complete docs from various places (doxygen, and the markdown app docs)
• [] Create system to automatically make c.l. option table for each app
• [] Decide: do we use github pages, or host it on one of the snazzy magao-x domains?

6 To-Do

To-do items are listed in the above sections. Also see the Todo page in the doxygen html. Other misc. items below:

• [] split base INDI off into separate repo, which will be the minimum someone needs to have INDI utils for interacting with MagAO-X without installing the whole tree.
• [] create indiserver startup script which takes a list of drivers from a config file, creates symlinks to xindidriver as needed, and then starts indiserver itself.
• [] start issue tracking