McStas Installation

Before you install McStas, you may try it from our Ubuntu Live-CD. Just burn the CD and reboot your machine. The local system is not affected, all runs from the CD.

The official installation instruction are explained in the install.html file of the distribution.
We recommand, in a few words, the following procedure:

For Linux/Unix:
  1. Check that a C compiler is installed (often the case, type 'gcc -v' to check). gcc is perfect.
  2. Check that Perl is installed (this is usually the case, 'type 'perl -v' to check)
  3. Check that Tk is installed (often the case)
  4. Install perl-tk (this is a standard package given with all systems)
  5. Optionally: install Matlab
  6. Optionally: install a VRML viewer (such as LookAt, FreeWRL, Octaga, ...)
  7. Optionally (alternative): install (from the system distribution) perl-pdl, the X11-dev libraries and (from McStas installation, as superuser) try: ./configure; make install-pgplot
  8. Optionally: install OpenMPI or MPICH
  9. Optionally: install Octave and GnuPlot
  10. Install McStas: ./configure; make; make install
  11. Start McStas with: mcgui

For Windows:
Use our automated Windows installer (see the download page), which provides Perl 5.10, Dev-Cpp, Scilab 4.0, VRML Cortona Viewer and McStas. Click 'Next' all the way through.

You may have a look at the FAQ page in case of troubles.