[info-gnuastro] Gnuastro 0.6.54 (alpha) released

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

Hi everyone,

I am happy to say that the next release of Gnuastro (version 0.7) is
almost ready and will be made in the next week or two.

In the meantime, we are making this alpha-release. It would be great
if you could try building and using this tarball and inform us if any
warnings or crashes occur during the build on your system, or if the
programs don't operate as you expect. In this way, we can be sure that
the official 0.7 release will be as suitable for everyone as possible.

For a full list of what is new in this release compared to Gnuastro
0.6, please see the NEWS file below [1]. With the links below, you can
download the compressed source and a GPG detached signature. See [2]
for uncompressing Lzip tarball and [3] to check the validity of the
tarball using the GPG detached signature.
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.6.54-6aa5.tar.lz 
[3.1Mb]
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.6.54-6aa5.tar.lz.sig 
[833b ]

Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums (other ways to check if the
tarball you download is what we distributed):
  b4aa664473a47d61f8da662542c78f2d  gnuastro-0.6.54-6aa5.tar.lz
  2db02dff515298ce5ba39e89ac07d6f6964baadd  gnuastro-0.6.54-6aa5.tar.lz

This is the first bug-fix release, with more bugs fixed than major
features added! This may be a good sign that Gnuastro is starting to
stabilize and its tools are becoming more mature. But of course, we
still have a long way to go in this aspect. So please join us if you
are interested so we can make it even more complete and useful.

For a regular user, the most interesting new feature may be those in
the Arithmetic program: With the `set-' operator, a name can be given
to the popped data-set, thus greatly simplifying complex operations,
while also speeding them up (it is only necessary to read a named file
once). See the description of this operator in the book/manual for
more.

As you might have noticed from the 0.6 release we added a section to
install dependencies using major package managers (link below), the
book in this release contains the commands for `apt-get', `dnf' (or
`yum'), `brew', and `pacman'. If you use a different package manager,
please send me the necessary command and description so it is added in
the Gnuastro 0.7 book (on the web page also).

https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Dependencies-from-package-managers.html

I am very grateful to (in alphabetical order): Valentina
Abril-melgarejo, Leindert Boogaard, Nushkia Chamba, Takashi Ichikawa,
Oryna Ivashtenko, Geoffry Krouchi, Alan Lefor, Juan Molina Tobar,
Dmitrii Oparin, Teymoor Saifollahi, Jenny Sorce who provided many
great comments, suggestions and/or bug reports to this release. I am
also generally very grateful to the organizers and attendees of the
4th Indo-French Astronomy School that was held here in Lyon, it was a
very productive week for Gnuastro (with great suggestions along with
many bugs that were found and fixed).

If any of Gnuastro's program are useful in your work, please run the
relevant programs with a `--cite' option (it can be different for
different programs) for guidelines on how to cite them in your
papers. Citations are vital for the continued work on Gnuastro, so
please don't forget to support us by doing so.

This tarball was bootstrapped (created) with the tools below. Note
that these are not Gnuastro's build dependencies (from the
tarball). These are the tools that made the tarball.
  Texinfo 6.5
  Autoconf 2.69
  Automake 1.15.1
  Help2man 1.47.6
  Gnulib v0.1-2009-gc1599f2fe
  Autoconf archives v2018.03.13-87-g72e8def
For Gnuastro's build dependencies, please see:
https://www.gnu.org/s/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Dependencies.html

Best wishes,
Mohammad

--
Mohammad Akhlaghi
Postdoctoral research fellow,
Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon (CRAL),
Observatoire de Lyon. 9, Avenue Charles André,
Saint Genis Laval (69230), France.





[1] NEWS file for 0.6.54:
** New features

  Installation:
    --enable-debug: enable debugging flags and disable optimization.
    --enable-check-with-valgrind: Run `make check' tests within Valgrind.

  Arithmetic:
    - `set-A': Set a name (`A' in this case) for the popped dataset. This
               allows only reading the dataset it into memory once and
               possibly using it many times.
    - `collapse-sum': collapse/remove a dimension by summing over it.
    - `collapse-mean': collapse/remove a dimension by averaging over it.
    - `collapse-number': Number of elements included in the collapse.

  MakeCatalog:
    --minx: minimum position along first FITS axis.
    --maxx: maximum position along first FITS axis.
    --miny: minimum position along second FITS axis.
    --maxy: maximum position along second FITS axis.

  Table:
    --colinfoinstdout: column information when writing to standard output.

  Library:
    - gal_array_name_recognized_multiext: If format contains multiple 
datasets.
    - gal_dimension_collapse_sum: collapse/remove a dimension by summing.
    - gal_dimension_collapse_mean: collapse/remove a dimension by 
averaging.
    - gal_dimension_collapse_number: collapse/remove a dimension by number.
    - gal_wcs_remove_dimension: Remove a dimension in the given WCS 
structure.

** Removed features

** Changed features

  Crop:
    --checkcenter: the units of value depend on mode (image or WCS).

  MakeCatalog:
    - `--checkuplim': new name for `--checkupperlimit'.
    - `--brightnessnoriver': new name for `--noriverbrightness'.

  Library:
    - gal_txt_write: new `colinfoinstdout' argument.
    - gal_table_write: new `colinfoinstdout' argument.

** Bugs fixed

  bug #54057: Building failure due to not finding gsl_interp_steffen.
  bug #54063: Match tests in make check fail randomly.
  bug #54186: MakeCatalog's --checkupperlimit not keeping output's name.
  bug #54188: MakeCatalog's Upperlimit not being sigma-clipped properly.
  bug #54284: Crop segfault when catalog contains no data.
  bug #54285: make check fails if g++ not present.
  bug #54286: BuildProgram's configuration file, not built by default.
  bug #54297: No Match output when --notmatched called and no match.
  bug #54298: Table not writing array when there are no rows.
  bug #54312: Crash when CFITSIO doesn't have fits_is_reentrant function.
  bug #54346: Non '-I' or non '-L' strings in CPPFLAGS or LDFLAGS cause 
crash.
  bug #54358: Arithmetic's where, not ignoring blank values in condition.





[2] Lzip has better compression ratio and archival features compared
to the common `.gz' or `.xz' formats. Therefore Gnuastro's stable
releases are made in `.lz' along with `.gz' for historical
reasons. The alpha/test releases are only in `.lz'. If you don't have
Lzip, can download and install it from its webpage:

  https://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lzip.html

If you use GNU Tar, then the single command below should uncompress
and un-pack the tarball:

  $ tar xf gnuastro-0.6.54-6aa5.tar.lz

If the command above doesn't work, you have to un-compress and un-pack
it with two separate commands (or use a pipe to feed the output of the
first into the second):

  $ lzip -d gnuastro-0.6.54-6aa5.tar.lz
  $ tar xf gnuastro-0.6.54-6aa5.tar





[3] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify gnuastro-0.6.54-6aa5.tar.lz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 1849814357EFB73A

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.