Installing JAS3

Java Analysis Workstation 3 (JAS3) is a graphical workbench application that can be used for viewing and manipulating AIDA histograms, viewing event displays, and looking at basic information contained in LCIO files.

Before You Start

If you have installed JAS previously, then you may want to remove the existing plugin configuration to avoid conflicts with the new installation.

cd ~/.JAS3
mv extensions extensions.backup

The new plugin jars will be downloaded automatically later when configuring the plugins within JAS.

Getting the Distribution

You can download the latest distribution from the download area or use a command like this.

wget http://java.freehep.org/maven2/org/freehep/jas-assembly/3.2.11/jas-assembly-3.2.11-distribution.tar.gz

The above wget command is just an example using a specific version. 

In general, the current distribution listed in the download area should be used rather than some older one.

Installing the Distribution

Once the tarball is downloaded, you can unpack it with a Unix command.

tar -zxvf jas-assembly-3.2.11-distribution.tar.gz

This will create the directory jas-assembly-3.2.11 which is the root directory for running JAS.

Since JAS is Java software, there are no further command line steps required for installation. 

The rest of the configuration will be done within JAS itself.

Running JAS

You can run JAS from the command line using a simple command such as the following.

 ./jas-assembly-3.2.11/jas3

You should now see the GUI load.

It is also possible to setup a command shortcut pointing to this script.  (Doing this depends on the specifics of your operating system and/or window manager.)

Installing the Plugins from HPS Java

When developing HPS Java, you may want to update JAS3 with changes from your local installation. 

The plugins are installed automatically when building the entire hps-java trunk.

cd hps-java; mvn install -DskipTests

This will make sure that JAS sees your local version of the HPS Java Plugin and is the preferred method for installing the plugins.

Configuring Plugins

One can also install the plugins without having a local installation of hps-java, although this method can fall behind or not find the correct plugins at times.

In the View menu, click on the Plugin Manager item and find the HPS Java plugin in the tree menu under hep > hps.

You can install the plugin by clicking on the Install selected plugins button.

JAS will now download all the required jar files, so wait for this operation to complete.

When prompted, restart JAS3 by clicking on the Restart Now button.

The other plugins on which the HPS Java plugin depends will be installed automatically through a dependency resolution mechanism, so you should have a functioning JAS installation now.