Updating external packages possible? (i.e. st4gem)

[richardpan38]

I downloaded iraf from https://iraf.noirlab.edu/ on my macOS v12.2.1 with an Apple M1 chip. Was having difficulty downloading v2.18.1 from the installation with other issues coming up from before (killed: 9).

As such the NOIRLAB download works albeit on an older version. I was wondering if its possible to update external packages such as st4gem. Specifically I need the isophote st4gem/analysis/isophote package which is not currently available in v2.17, but is available with the newest version of IRAF.

[olebole]

Using an external package from the macOS Community IRAF installer on NOIRLABs installalation is not trivial, because 1) the installation paths are different (Community IRAF goes to /usr/local/lib/iraf, while NOIRLAB installs in the Applications folder), and 2), NOIRLAB decided to use a different IRAFARCH for mac/M1 (macosx instead of macos64).

Also, there is no new release of st4gem yet, and the Community IRAF installer still 2.18.1 installs the same version as 2.18 (and the NOIRLAB installation). Reason is that the updates since then are untested, and I hesitate to take them into the release this way.

So, the best way would probably be to install st4gem from source with mkpkg. It would be great if you could do (and document) tests with the updated package, as this would help to get the updated version into the installer.

Could I ask you to make a bug report on the failure you got? To improve IRAF, we heavily depend on bug reports.

Best

Ole