Gui tools (Perl + Tk)

The McStas tools are written using the Perl language, with calls the perl-Tk library.

• Win32:
  • Get and install the ActivePerl package from
    http://downloads.activestate.com/ActivePerl/Windows/5.6/ActivePerl-5.6.1.638-MSWin32-x86.msi This package provides Perl and Perl-Tk.
  • You may need to update/install the Microsoft Windows Installer. Get it from Windows Support Downloads at http://www.microsoft.com/.
  • Make sure that during installation, you have requested to attach the .pl and .tcl extensions to Perl and Tcl, and the C:\Perl\bin is in the PATH.
• Unix/Linux:
  • Install Perl, Tcl/Tk and perl-Tk. Prebuilt packages exist for most Linux distributions and also most other Unix-like operating systems. You will find these packages at http://freshmeat.net/, http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/ (for SuSe and RedHat) and using Fink Commander (for Mac OS X). Some Linux like system do not provide perl-Tk as an RPM/Debian file. You will then have to compile it from the source code (with ./configure; make; make install).
  • Consult the McStas webpage at http://www.mcstas.org for updated links to the source code distributions.