CASA Python executable wrapper

The approach described below is deprecated.

Instead, follow instructions here: https://docs.astropy.org/en/stable/install.html#installing-astropy-into-casa to install astropy or other packages into CASA.

About

casa-python is a simple script that allows users to invoke the Python executable for CASA as one would invoke a normal Python executable. This allows users to easily install third-party libraries into CASA. To do this, whenever installation instructions require you to run for example python setup.py install, instead use:

casa-python setup.py install

We also provide an interface to the pip package manager, casa-pip. One can install any* python package this way:

casa-pip install requests

Installation

The installation requires that you have CASA installed. You can check this by doing

$ which casa

at the command prompt. You should see the path to the file.

To install, download the latest version of the casa-python script from here and run it. This should be your system python, not CASA python (which should be on your path by default).

python setup_casapy_pip.py

or, alternatively:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/radio-tools/casa-python/master/setup_casapy_pip.py
python setup_casapy_pip.py

You should then add $HOME/.casa/bin/ to your path.

Example

To install Astropy into CASA, assuming you have the appropriate compilers on your system, you can run

casa-pip install astropy

Once the installation has completed, you can start up CASA as usual, and Astropy should be available:

CASA Version 4.1.0 (r22971)
  Compiled on: Thu 2013/02/21 17:38:25 UTC
___________________________________________________________________
    For help use the following commands:
    tasklist               - Task list organized by category
    taskhelp               - One line summary of available tasks
    help taskname          - Full help for task
    toolhelp               - One line summary of available tools
    help par.parametername - Full help for parameter name
___________________________________________________________________
Activating auto-logging. Current session state plus future input saved.
Filename       : ipython-20130319-150704.log
Mode           : backup
Output logging : False
Raw input log  : False
Timestamping   : False
State          : active
*** Loading ATNF ASAP Package...
*** ... ASAP (trunk rev#22948) import complete ***

CASA <2>: import astropy

CASA <3>: 

Caveats

Packages requiring c-compiled code rely on the existence of a C-compiler on your unix path.

Alternatives

Rather than install packages into CASA, it is also possible (although a little hackier) to try and import CASA into your existing Python installation - see here for more details.

Credits

The wrapper was prepared by Thomas Robitaille (@astrofrog) based on code from CASA, with contributions from Adam Leroy and Adam Ginsburg (@keflavich).