OIFITSlib is a C library for input/output, merging, filtering and checking of optical/IR interferometry datasets in the OIFITS exchange format. A preprint of the draft specification for OIFITS version 2 is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04556 .

Version 2.x of OIFITSlib supports the draft OIFITS version 2 standard: the library can read either v1 or v2 OIFITS files, and writes v2 files. The OIFITS standard has been designed such that v2 files are backwards-compatible with reading software intended for v1; hence a capability to write v1 files should not be needed. However, version 1.x of OIFITSlib is available on GitHub for writing v1 OIFITS files if required.

The program oifits-upgrade will convert a version 1 OIFITS file to version 2 of the standard. Other command-line utilities oifits-merge, oifits-filter and oifits-check are also provided - these provide simple user interfaces to OIFITSlib routines.

A python interface to OIFITSlib is also included (created using SWIG). To build this you will need SWIG 1.3 or later.

The following libraries are required - please install them first:

• CFITSIO (version 3.x recommended): http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fitsio.html
• GLib (version 2.16 or later required): http://www.gtk.org/

CMake is now used for building - this should be more portable than the previous Makefile. For those not familiar with CMake, instructions can be found at https://cmake.org/runningcmake/ . If you are using a Unix-like operating system the following commands should build and install OIFITSlib:

cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

Optionally, run make doc to generate the API reference documentation. Note that the "oitable" library can be built without GLib. If GLib is not detected or the pkg-config utility is not installed, only liboitable and its demonstration program oitable-demo will be built.

OIFITSlib has been tested under Linux (Ubuntu and CentOS) and MacOS X. The author is interested in hearing about successes or failures under other operating systems.

API reference documentation for OIFITSlib is automatically generated from comments in the C code using doxygen (refer to the build instructions above). After building the documentation, point your web browser to the file doc/oifitslib/html/index.html.

The command-line utilities oifits-merge, oifits-filter, oifits-check, and oifits-upgrade will output brief usage information if invoked with the --help argument.

The oifits-upgrade utility converts a valid OIFITS version 1 file to OIFITS version 2. The input file must include OI_ARRAY table(s) containing all of the array elements used to obtain the data. Version 2 of OIFITS defines several mandatory keywords for the primary header. The values for ORIGIN and INSMODE must be specified on the oifits-upgrade command line. Values for the other mandatory keywords are obtained from the contents of the input file.

The python interface is documented using python docstrings generated from SWIG interface files. Use pydoc to view the documentation for the oifits, oicheck, oimerge and oifilter modules.

The table-level input/output code (see exchange.h) in OIFITSlib is derived from the previously-released "OIFITS example software in C", and provides the same Application Programming Interface (API). OIFITSlib provides a file-level API built on top of the table-level code, containing functions to read and write an entire OIFITS file (see oifile.h).

OIFITSlib is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

OIFITSlib is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with OIFITSlib (in the file lgpl.txt). If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ .