Gridlink

A tool for knot theorists

Downloads:

• Standalone Macintosh Application (OS X 10.3 or higher)
• Standalone Windows Application
• The gridlink tarball and the py_hfk tarball (UNIX/Cygwin)
• The gridlink zip archive and the py_hfk zip archive (Windows with python)

Installation:

• Mac OS X Application

  Download the disk image from the link above (it is named Gridlink.dmg). Attach the disk image. Drag the figure 8 icon into your Applications folder (or wherever else you might want it to go). Double click the figure 8 icon to run the program. To uninstall, drag the application to the trash.

• Windows Application

  Download the Gridlink.exe file from the link above and save to disk on your desktop or in the folder of your choice. Double click the figure 8 icon to run the program. To uninstall, delete the file.

• Python source for UNIX/Cygwin, Mac OSX or Windows with python installed

  These instructions are for installing Gridlink and py_hfk as python extension modules. The py_hfk module must be installed to enable Gridlink to compute Heegaard Floer Knot homology, but Gridlink will run happily without py_hfk.

  NOTE: In order to work with a Windows python distribution, the py_hfk module must be compiled with the proprietary Microsoft C++ compiler. The build directory in the zip archive contains a pre-compiled library, built with the Python 2.4 distribution for Windows and the Microsoft compiler.

  The description below is written for the gridlink package; follow the same procedure to install py_hfk. On some linux systems, e.g. debian, it may be necessary to install the python-dev package in order to do the installation.

  • Download gridlink.tgz (or gridlink.zip) to a temporary location. (e.g. /tmp or Desktop)
  • Change to the temporary directory. (cd /tmp or cd Desktop)
  • Unpack the archive (tar xfvz gridlink.tgz in UNIX or Mac OSX)
  • Change to the newly created Gridlink_pkg directory. ( cd Gridlink_pkg)
  • Run the python installation program:
    
    
    If you are a UNIX superuser and would like to install gridlink for use by all users:

    sudo python setup.py install

    Or, if you are logged in as root or using Windows:

    python setup.py install
    
    If you are not a superuser and want to install gridlink in your UNIX home directory, type:

    python setup.py install --home ~

    This will install the executable script in the directory ~/bin and the other files will be installed in ~/lib/python . For this to work conveniently, you will need the directory ~/bin to be included in your environment variable PATH, and you will need ~/lib/python to be included in your environment variable PYTHONPATH. You can arrange this by typing the two commands below or, to have it done automatically, by adding the commands to the appropriate startup file (e.g. ~/.profile or ~/.cshrc):
    For the bash shell:

    
    export PATH=~/bin:$PATH
    export PYTHONPATH=~/lib/python:$PYTHONPATH
    

    For the csh or tcsh shells:

    
    setenv PATH "~/bin:$PATH"
    setenv PYTHONPATH "~/lib/python:$PYTHONPATH"