source: trunk/FACT++/MAINPAGE@ 10565

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/** @mainpage

@brief FACT++ - The FACT slow control software

@author thomas.bretz@epfl.ch et al.
@version 1.0
 
@section install_sec Installation

FACT++ can be downloaded from the svn by

\verbatim
   svn checkout https://fact.isdc.unige.ch/svn/trunk/FACT++ [localdir]
\endverbatim

it includes a dim version which is automatically compiled.

For compilation use

\verbatim
   ./configure
   make
\endverbatim

Check the \b ./configure options with \b --help. It might look 
confusing, but some features like FITS or QT4 can be switched off,
if the necessary library is not at hand and the feature is not needed.
For example, if the GUI is not needed its compilation can be switched
off by disabling QT4 support with \b --without-qt4.

If you use a custom built root version on your system without QT 
support, but have a distribution packe (e.g. debian package) with
QT support available, you can give the path to root executables,
for example, with <B>--with-rootsys=/usr/bin</B>. All other paths
are extracted from subsequent calls to \b root-config.

Hint: Sometimes installing root from packages doesn't work as
expected (at least on my Ubuntu). It might be necessary to
find some of the root packages with the libraries giving trouble
and reinstall them after the root package was already installed.

Remark: root 5.24 und root 5.26 seem to have issues. Although there
are some X errors when starting, it seems to work quite nice with
5.18/00b and 5.26/00e

Running \b ./configure will take some time. It tries to really check
carefully that everything needed is available on your system, so that you 
get errors before you start compilation.

If \b ./configure fails please and you send a bug report please attach
the file config.log.

If \b make fails please and you send a bug report please attach
the complete output of <B>make V=1</B>.

\b Reminder: These programs use shared libraries, i.e. whenever you re-compile
part of the project some of them might be re-compiled as well. As a result
already running programs might crash unexpectedly! This is \b not a bug.

In principle configure also supports

\verbatim
   make install
\endverbatim

which would install the package and the libraries in your system,
although at the moment this is not recommended

@subsection packages Required packages

If you find a new package needed for installation please don't
hesitate to report it, so that it can be added to the list below.

Packages known to be needed to configure and compile FACT++

<B>Dim:</B>
- lesstif2, lesstif2-dev (Xm.h, needed to compile did)

<B>Libraries:</B>
- libreadline, libreadline-dev
- boost, boost-dev (>=V1.40, all)
- mysql++, mysql++-dev
- libcfits, libcfitsio-dev
- libccfits, libccfits-dev                                        

<B>For GUI support:</B>
- libqt4-core
- libqt4-dev
- root

<B>Documentation:</B>
- doxygen
- graphviz
- help2man
- groff
- ps2pdf

<B>Only for maintainers:</B>
- autoconf (automake, autotools-dev, m4)
- autoconf-archive
- libtool (contains libtoolize
- colorsvn (recommended)
- colorgcc (recommended)
- qt4-designer

@section Demo Current demonstration programs

- \b dserver2: A virtual board (A TCP/IP server). It is sending a
  "hello" message after accepting a communication and then in 3s
  intervals the current UTC time. The board can be set to state 1 or back
  to state 0 (just as a demonstration)
- \b dclient5: A control program. It accesses two viratual boards (start them
  with 'dserver2 5000' and 'dserver2 4001') If both boards are connected the START
  command can be issued to get them to state 'Running'. In this state
  an asynchronous time stamp can be requested sending the TIME command.
  to get back from Running to Connected use STOP. 
- \b test3: a dim console which allows to control all dim servers
  by sending commands via the dim network.
- Both, \b dclient5 and \b test3 accept the command line options -c0, -c1, -c2
  to switch between different console types (or no console in the case of
  \b dclient5). In the console you get help with 'h' and the available
  command with 'c' You get the avilable command-line options with --help

First start the two dserver2s. Then start a dclient5 (if you want it
with console use one of the -c options) and a test3 console (with one
of the console options if you like) you can now control the hardware
boards with the START, STOP and TIME commands or stop (Ctrl-C) and
start one of the programs to see what's happening. In the test3 case
you first have to \e cd to the server to which you want to talk by \b
DATA_LOGGER. Don't forget to start \b dns if you want to control dclient5
from test3 via Dim.

@section dimremarks Remarks about Dim usage

To be able to write all received data directly to the FITS files,
padding has been disabled calling dic_diable_padding() and 
dis_disable_padding(). This is done in our own error handler
DimErrorRedirecter. Since this should be one of the first 
objects created in any environment it is quite save. However, every
Dim client or server in our network which does not use the 
DimErrorRedirecter \b must call these two functions as early as
possible.

@section exitcodes Exit Code
@section newcommand How to add a new command?
@section description How to add help textes to services and commands?

@section addtab How to add a new tab in the gui?

Do the following steps in exactly this order:
- Insert the new page from the context menu of the QTabWidget
- Copy the QDockWidget from one of the other tabs to the clipboard
- Paste the copied QDockWidget and add it to the new tab (only the tab should be highlited)
- Now click on the context menu of the region in the tab (QWidget) and change the layout to grid layout


@section Documentation

Each program has an extensive help text (except the examples). This help text can
be displayed with the \b --help option. For each program a man-page is automatically
created (from the help-output), which (at the moment) can be accessed with <B>man
FILE</B>.

@section References

@subsection generalref General references
- <A HREF="http://www.cplusplus.com/reference">The C++ reference</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.boost.org">boost.org: The boost C++ libraries</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.highscore.de/cpp/boost/titelseite.html">Boris Sch&auml;ling: Die Boost C++ Bibliotheken</A>
- <A HREF="http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html">GNU Readline</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses">GNU Ncurses</A>
- <A HREF="http://dim.web.cern.ch/">Distributed Information Management (DIM)</A>
- <A HREF="http://dim.web.cern.ch/dim/cpp_doc/DimCpp.html">Distributed Information Management (DIM) - C++ reference</A>
- <A HREF="http://qt.nokia.com/">Qt homepage</A>
- <A HREF="http://qt.nokia.com/downloads/">Qt downloads</A>

@subsection boostref Boost references
- <A HREF="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/libs/bind/bind.html">boost::bind (V1.45.0)</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/doc/html/boost_asio.html">boost asio (V1.45.0)</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/doc/html/date_time.html">boost date_time (V1.45.0)</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/doc/html/program_options.html">boost program_options (V1.45.0)</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/libs/filesystem/v3/doc/index.htm">boost filesystem (V1.45.0)</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/libs/regex/doc/html/index.html">boost regex (V1.45.0)</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/libs/system/doc/index.html">boost system (error codes) (V1.45.0)</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/doc/html/thread.html">boost thread (V1.45.0)</A>
- <A HREF="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/libs/conversion/lexical_cast.htm">boost lexical_cast (V1.45.0)</A>

@subsection fitsref FITS references
- <A HREF="http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/fits.html">The FITS data format</A>
- <A HREF="http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/fitsio/">FITS homepage</A>
- <A HREF="http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/fitsio/CCfits/">CCfits - A C++ wrapper to cfitsio</A>
- <A HREF="http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/ftools/fv/">fv - A very simple viewer to FITS file contents</A>

@subsection qtroot How to integrate root in QT?

- <A HREF="http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/designer-creating-custom-widgets.html">QT4: Creating custom widgets</A>
- <A HREF="http://root.cern.ch/download/doc/26ROOTandQt.pdf">root: QT integration (pdf)</A>


@section Available programs

- dns: Dim's domain-name-server (needed for any communication between Dim servers and clients)
- did: A simple graphical interface to analyse everything in a Dim network

@section Examples

There are a few example programs
- \b ./argv: Example for usage of the class Configure (command line options, configuration file)
- \b ./time: Example for the usage of the class Time (time input/output, conversion)
- \b ./log, \b ./logtime: A simple Dim-Service/-Client combination using MessageDimRX/MessageDimTX

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