Installation Instructions

By default, the SPS Test Suite is installed to /opt/sps location. Installation can only be done by a user with sudo privileges. First clone ska-low-sps-testsuite into your local area, i.e your home directory.

git clone https://gitlab.com/ska-telescope/ska-low-sps-testsuite.git  --recurse-submodules
cd ska-low-sps-testsuite
git checkout main
git pull

Install SPS software onto your machine by running the deploy script.

pushd scripts/install
./deploy.sh

A custom install path can be specified as below. We still recommend installing to the /opt location however.

./deploy.sh -a /opt/my-sps-testing

This script should _not_ be executed with sudo, however the user executing it must have sudo privileges. Only the user running this script will have privileges to install additional Python packages in the virtual environment.

This script uses /usr/bin/python3 as default Python interpreter. To use another interpreter, for instance Python 3.11, instead of the default python3, run the following before deploying to set the SPS_PYTHON_BIN environment variable.

export SPS_PYTHON_BIN=/usr/bin/python3.11

After running the deploy script the Python virtual environment can be sourced as below:

source /opt/sps/python/bin/activate

NOTE: This path includes the default install location so if using a custom install path as above the command will be something like:

source /opt/my-sps-testsing/python/bin/activate

Alternatively, the deployment sets the following BASH alias for activating the virtual environment which can be used from any location:

sps_python

Using the command line option -c will delete the following directories before installing ska-low-sps-testsuite.

/opt/sps/python
src/build
src/dist
scripts/install/third_party

To allow development of the testsuite’s dependencies, SKA-Low SPS TPM API, SKA-Low MCCS DAQ and iTPM Bios branches can be specified with the -b, -D and -t arguments, all of which default to main. For example:

cd ska-low-sps-testsuite
git fetch
git switch feature-branch-sps-testsuite
git pull
./deploy.sh -b feature-branch-tpm-api -D feature-branch-mccs-daq -c

Below are all command line arguments supported by the deploy script:

Arguments:
-C             Correlator will be compiled, installing CUDA and xGPU in the process (off by default)
            NOTE: Automated install of CUDA and xGPU not supported yet
-p             Activate SPS virtualenv in .bashrc (off by default)
-a <install path> specifies location of installed SPS Testsuite (default /opt/sps), must be absolute
-v <venv path> specifies location of 'python' virtualenv folder (default /opt/sps)
-b <tpm_api_branch> specifies TPM API branch to be installed
-D <DAQ branch> specifies MCCS DAQ branch to be installed
-d             specifies the number of FPGA firmware releases downloaded from the SKAO CAR
-L <DAQ core branch (aavs-daq) specifies DAQ core (aavs-daq) branch to be installed
-t <itpm_bios_branch> specifies itpm-bios branch to be installed
-c             clean build directories and installed python virtual environment
-h             Print this message