Quick installation instructions for STAMP

Binary releases

Precompiled binaries are available for Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X. The Windows binary has been tested under Windows XP SP3 and the Mac binary was tested under Leopard. These binaries will likely run under newer versions of these operating systems (Windows Vista, Windows 7, Snow Leopard). If you are running one of these newer operating systems we would appreciate knowing if these binaries worked for you.

Note: if you have a pristine copy of Microsoft Windows installed you may need to install the Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package. This package contains a number of commonly required runtime components and as such you likely already have them. STAMP will fail with a message indicating the "configuration is incorrect" if you require this package.

Source code on Microsoft Windows

STAMP is implemented in Python and running it from source is easy. Any operating system that supports Python should be able to run STAMP from source. Running from source is the best way to fully exploit and contribute to STAMP. STAMP is dependent on the following libraries:

• Python 2.5 or 2.6 (we recommend Python 2.6.4)
• PyQt4
• NumPy and SciPy
• mpmath
• matplotlib

After you have installed Python and the above libraries, extract the STAMP source code files to a directory (e.g., C:\STAMP). You can now run STAMP by moving to the source directory and entering 'python STAMP.py' on your command line. If you get an error message indicating Python cannot be found you likely need to add it to your system path (check out this website for instructions). If you have trouble installing STAMP please feel free to contact us.

Source code on Apple's OS X

Running STAMP from source on Apple's OS X is straight-forward. It requires minimal effort on your part, although it does require a lot of compiling to be done by your computer. There are many ways to get STAMP running for source, but we have found the following the simplest (if you have a better way, please let us know):

• Install MacPort

From your console, install the necessary dependencies for STAMP using port (please not that PyQt4 can take over an hour to install):

 sudo port install python25
 sudo port install python_select
 sudo python_select python25
 sudo port install py25-macholib-devel
 sudo port install py25-sip
 sudo port install py25-pyqt4
 sudo port install py25-numpy
 sudo port install py25-scipy
 sudo port install py25-matplotlib
 sudo port install py25-mpmath

To test that all dependencies where installed correctly, start a python session and type to import each package:

 import PyQt4
 import numpy
 import scipy
 import matplotlib
 import mpmath

If any of these fail, try installing them again. After you have installed Python and the above libraries, extract the STAMP source code files to a directory (e.g., ~\STAMP). You can now run STAMP by moving to the source directory and entering 'python STAMP.py' on your command line. If you have trouble installing STAMP please feel free to contact us.