STScI Logo

STSDAS
Regarding Support For 64-bit IRAF (v2.15)

Summary: STSDAS will remain 32-bit

Details:

IRAF 2.15 includes support for 64-bit systems. The changes necessary to support 64-bits generally require applications to be modified. For many packages the changes are relatively minor. Nevertheless, for others they can be more substantial, and involve quite a bit of testing and risk of undiscovered problems. In the case of TABLES and STSDAS, there are packages that fall into both these categories. STScI has decided that it is not worth the effort to port these packages in their entirety to 64-bits. The following will describe our plans for handling support of 64-bit IRAF with regard to TABLES and STSDAS:

  1. NOAO will produce a 64-bit version of the core tables libraries so that 64-bit IRAF application can access tables. There will continue to be a 32-bit version of tables in the TABLES release to support 32-bit applications.
  2. STScI will release 32-bit binaries of the TABLES and STSDAS packages to use with IRAF 2.15. Support for 32-binaries will continue as long as there are sufficient platforms that such binaries will run on.
  3. For some packages in TABLES and STSDAS, we will port these to 64-bit versions at some point in the future. We may only do that when 32-bits is no longer viable, or we may do that much sooner. The 64-bit versions will be released in a new package separate from TABLES and STSDAS that has a different name. It is possible that we may support this new package simultaneously with the 32-bit TABLES and STSDAS packages. That decision depends on resources and details of the IRAF 2.15 release not yet known. The new 64-bit package will only contain a small subset of existing TABLES and STSDAS packages. Packages likely to be ported to 64-bits include fourier, isophote, restore, and fitting, as well as many plotting tasks. Nothing in hst_calib will be ported (there will be non-IRAF version of CALACS, CALSTIS, CALNIC, CALCOS, and CALWF3 available). Whether ttools eventually is ported by us to 64-bits or taken into the IRAF core is not yet clear to us. The final list of what we will port has not yet been decided. The decision will be based on the ease of the port and whether we believe the package has any continuing utility.
  4. When the 32-bit versions of TABLES and STSDAS are no longer viable, support for any tasks within those packages not ported to 64-bits will end.