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Starlink / starjava

Java applications initially developed for the Starlink Project but now developed independently
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Starjava

The starjava package consists of some Java-based applications and libraries including TOPCAT, STILTS, SPLAT, their dependencies, and a few other things, some of them obsolete. These packages were originally developed within the UK's Starlink project (1980-2005), hence the name.

Building from source

Background

Most people do not need to build starjava. If you just want to use the code, you can find pre-built platform-neutral jar files elsewhere, e.g. the TOPCAT, STILTS, STIL or SPLAT web pages.

Requisites

Most of the packages can be built from source using just a Java Development Kit (JDK). Note that you need a JDK not just a JRE (Java Runtime Environment), i.e. there must be a javac command as well as java. A JDK of Java 8 (a.k.a. 1.8) or later is required. The build has been tested using the Oracle JDK LTS releases Java 8, Java 11, Java 17 and Java 21, but any JDK between 8 and 21 (and perhaps later) is expected to work.

In order to build SPLAT and certain other packages, Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) must be installed in the JDK. JAI can be obtained from https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/advanced-imaging-api.html. But if you only need TOPCAT, this is not necessary.

Instructions

Here is how to do the build. A bash-like shell is assumed.

Clone the git repository into ~/starjava/source (or similar):

sj=~/starjava  # or whatever
mkdir -p $sj
cd $sj
git clone git@github.com:Starlink/starjava.git source
# or git clone https://github.com/Starlink/starjava.git source
cd source

Set the STAR_JAVA environment variable to the location of the java binary in your JDK of choice. Just setting it to /usr/bin/java may do the trick.

export STAR_JAVA=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/bin/java  # or wherever
$STAR_JAVA -version

Build the jar files using the bundled ant binary, installing them into directories under $sj like lib/, bin/ and docs/. This will take a few minutes.

$sj/source/ant/bin/ant build install

You can then run e.g. $sj/bin/topcat or java -jar $sj/lib/topcat/topcat.jar. The javadocs, and in some cases other documentation, for each package can be found in subdirectories under $sj/docs/.

Some other targets are available as well (run ant -projecthelp to see what they are). You can run tests with the test target, or build a single javadocs page that links all the library packages in $sj/source/docs/javadocs/index.html) using the javadocs-full target. For instance:

$sj/source/ant/bin/ant test
$sj/source/ant/bin/ant javadocs-full

Individual packages are in their own directories under $sj/source. You can run ant from within these subdirectories to perform the build in each package separately. Each package has ant targets build, install, test, deinstall, clean. Some packages have other targets too (see ant -projecthelp); topcat and stilts have the build-standalone target to build the monolithic jar files (containing all dependencies) topcat-full.jar and stilts.jar respectively, for instance:

cd $sj/source/topcat
$sj/source/ant/bin/ant build-standalone install
$STAR_JAVA -jar $sj/lib/topcat/topcat-full.jar

More information

For more details on the build system, including how to build other components from source like the ant binary itself and the native code required by some of the packages, see the README.starlink file.