The 95NOV release of ESO--MIDAS can run on most UNIX systems, and is most likely to run under DEC/VMS 4.7 and DEC/OPEN-VMS 6.0 (or higher). If you are going to install ESO-MIDAS on your system you have retrieved a copy of this release through ftp. However, as have been announced, as of 1995 new applications are not tested automatically on VMS/Open VMS systems.
The monitor and low level interfaces are coded in C which means the portable MIDAS requires a C compiler for installation. Many applications are written in FORTRAN-77 and can therefore only be installed if either a FORTRAN-77 compiler or a FORTRAN-to-C convertion package ( e.g. f2c for UNIX) is available. The installation of MIDAS has been certified with the public domain GNU ANSI-C compiler which can be obtained from the Free Software Foundation, and verified with the quality control tool Purify from Pure-Software.
The instructions for installation are given in separate documents for either VMS or UNIX systems which are included in the distribution kit. Read the appropriate one carefully and proceed as described (the procedure may have been modified compared with previous installations!). Basic knowledge of your local operating system (e.g. VMS or UNIX) is assumed and required.
One area may require special attention during the first installation. It relates to the image display interfaces that, for MIDAS, must conform to the standard IDI interfaces. IDI's are provided only for the X-Window system, Version 11. For other display devices a set of IDI routines has to be written.
For a few commands the NAG mathematical library is required. If you
do not have this library MIDAS can still be installed, however, some
commands may not be available. In future versions we will try to
reduce our dependency on NAG. A list of programs using NAG and the
routines are given in Section 
.
Starting with the 89NOV release a separate installation of the lower level AGL library is no longer required. The library, i.e. those parts needed for the MIDAS plot facilities, is fully integrated within the MIDAS directory structure and will be generated as every other MIDAS subroutine library. For a full installation of the AGL library refer to the Astronet Documentation Facility, Trieste.