The starjava package consists of some Java-based applications and libraries including TOPCAT, STILTS, SPLAT, their dependencies, and a few other things, some of them obsolete. These packages were originally developed within the UK's Starlink project (1980-2005), hence the name.
Most people do not need to build starjava. If you just want to use the code, you can find pre-built platform-neutral jar files elsewhere, e.g. the TOPCAT, STILTS, STIL or SPLAT web pages.
Most of the packages can be built from source using just a
Java Development Kit (JDK).
Note that you need a JDK not just a JRE (Java Runtime Environment),
i.e. there must be a javac command as well as java.
A JDK of Java 8 (a.k.a. 1.8) or later is required.
The build has been tested using the Oracle
JDK LTS releases Java 8, Java 11, Java 17 and Java 21, but any JDK
between 8 and 21 (and perhaps later) is expected to work.
In order to build SPLAT and certain other packages, Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) must be installed in the JDK. JAI can be obtained from https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/advanced-imaging-api.html. But if you only need TOPCAT, this is not necessary.
Here is how to do the build. A bash-like shell is assumed.
Clone the git repository into ~/starjava/source (or similar):
sj=~/starjava # or whatever
mkdir -p $sj
cd $sj
git clone git@github.com:Starlink/starjava.git source
# or git clone https://github.com/Starlink/starjava.git source
cd source
Set the STAR_JAVA environment variable to the location of the java
binary in your JDK of choice. Just setting it to /usr/bin/java
may do the trick.
export STAR_JAVA=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/bin/java # or wherever
$STAR_JAVA -version
Build the jar files using the bundled ant binary, installing them into
directories under $sj like lib/, bin/ and docs/. This will take a few
minutes.
$sj/source/ant/bin/ant build install
You can then run e.g. $sj/bin/topcat or java -jar $sj/lib/topcat/topcat.jar.
The javadocs, and in some cases other documentation,
for each package can be found in subdirectories under $sj/docs/.
Some other targets are available as well (run ant -projecthelp
to see what they are).
You can run tests with the test target, or build a single javadocs page
that links all the library packages in $sj/source/docs/javadocs/index.html)
using the javadocs-full target.
For instance:
$sj/source/ant/bin/ant test
$sj/source/ant/bin/ant javadocs-full
Individual packages are in their own directories under $sj/source.
You can run ant from within these subdirectories
to perform the build in each package separately.
Each package has ant targets build, install, test, deinstall, clean.
Some packages have other targets too (see ant -projecthelp);
topcat and stilts have the build-standalone target to build the
monolithic jar files (containing all dependencies) topcat-full.jar
and stilts.jar respectively, for instance:
cd $sj/source/topcat
$sj/source/ant/bin/ant build-standalone install
$STAR_JAVA -jar $sj/lib/topcat/topcat-full.jar
For more details on the build system, including how to build other components from source like the ant binary itself and the native code required by some of the packages, see the README.starlink file.