[info-gnuastro] gnuastro-0.2.28-34fb released [alpha]

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

Hello,

I am happy to announce the release of Gnuastro 0.2.28-34fb (alpha-release).
This is the first test release after the 0.2 release.

GNU Astronomy Utilities (Gnuastro) is a collection of programs and a
library functions for astronomical data manipulation and analysis. The
programs are run directory on the command-line, enabling easy and efficient
operation, combined with other installed programs in shell scripts or
Makefiles. The libraries are also usable in C and C++ programs.

For the main changes in this version can be seen in the NEWS file which is
also distributed with this announcement in [1] (below). The most notable
new features are:

 - ImageWarp can now align an image with the celestial coordiates. It also
   doesn't necessarily need a warping matrix as input, all standard
   warpings (rotation, scaling, translation, shear, flipping, and
   projection) can now be given as options at runtime and the warping
   matrix will be constructed internally.

 - libgit2 is a new optional dependency. When it is present and Gnuastro is
   run in a version controlled directory, the output of `git describe' will
   be stored as a FITS keyword. This tagging of the outputs is useful for
   reproducible results in an ongoing project.

Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature[*]:
  http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.2.28-34fb.tar.gz
  http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.2.28-34fb.tar.gz.sig

Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums:
  9fe158e11ac6b6d877a5dbea9a61afe0  gnuastro-0.2.28-34fb.tar.gz
  1c11680d78440ff88d86c8a61e209b1f90acb21d  gnuastro-0.2.28-34fb.tar.gz

I should also acknowledge the very useful comments/suggestions from Alan
Lefor, Francesco Montanari, Mosè Giordano, Vladimir Markelov in this
alpha-release.

Gnuastro 0.2.28-34fb tarball was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Texinfo 6.3
  Autoconf 2.69
  Automake 1.15
  Libtool 2.4.6
  Help2man 1.47.3
  Gnulib v0.1-936-gdf6f91c
  Autoconf Archives v2016.09.16-17-gb6aeb19
Note that these are not installation dependencies, for those, please see
https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Dependencies.html

Cheers,
Mohammad Akhlaghi

--
Postdoctoral research fellow
CRAL (Lyon Observatory), France.





[1]
* Noteworthy changes in release 0.2-28 (library 1.0.0) (2016-10-23) [alpha]

 ** Bug fixes

  Using `%zu' to print `size_t' variables for clean build on 32-bit
  systems.

  Crash in Table for some operating systems due to memory is now fixed (bug
  #49347).

  Table's man-page is now created and installed (bug #49418).

  Fixes in the documentation (sr #109170, bug #49419).

** New programs, functions, or macros

  `gal_wcs_pixel_scale_deg'
    Returns the pixel scale of the input WCS structure in degrees.

  `gal_wcs_angular_distance_deg'
    This has replaced `gal_wcs_angular_distance'. That function would take
    the angles in radians and also return its value in radians. Radians are
    very inconvenient and uncommon in celestial coordinates, so its input
    and output was modified to accept angles in degrees and also return the
    angular distance in degrees.

  `gnuastro/git.h'
    New header for wrappers on the Git library.

  `gal_git_describe'
    Bascially a wrapper on Git's describe functions to return the string
    for easy inclusion.

  `gal_fits_datatype_size
    Return the size (in bytes) of the given datatype.

  `GAL_GNUASTRO_HAVE_PTHREAD_BARRIER'
    This is a new name for the old `GAL_GNUASTRO_PTHREAD_BARRIER' to
    conform better with other such marcos.

  `GAL_GNUASTRO_HAVE_LIBGIT2'
    Has a value of 1 if the host system has the Git library (`libgit2').


** Removed programs, functions, macros

  `gal_wcs_angular_distance'
    See the explanation above for `gal_wcs_angular_distance_deg'.

  `GAL_GNUASTRO_PTHREAD_BARRIER'
    See the explanation above for `GAL_GNUASTRO_HAVE_PTHREAD_BARRIER'.

** New features

  ImageWarp can now align the image with the celestial coordiates using the
  `--align' option.

  ImageWarp can now warp without an input matrix, using the following
  options: `--shear', `--flip', `--project', `--rotate', `--scale',
  `--translate'. Any number of these transformations (along with the
  `--align' option) can be called at runtime and they will be applied in
  the same order to create one warping matrix. By default the FITS
  coordinates will also be corrected.

** Changes in behavior

  When a 2 by 2 matrix is given to ImageWarp, the FITS pixel positions
  (which define the center of a pixel as an integer) are automatically
  implemented internally, see "Invoking ImageWarp" in the manual for more.

  `gal_fits_write_keys_version' will now also write the Git commit
  description when the Git library is installed on the host system.





[2]
Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify gnuastro-0.2.28-34fb.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 16A8A4B2AEC42AFF

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.