Hippodraw

Hippodraw is not going to be supported for much longer by SLAC but it provides a great interface to ROOT files within python. While one cannot completely avoid working with ROOT in HEP or Astro-particle physics you can avoid much of it by using this tool to load ROOT files into a python analysis framework.

However, this program is a beast to get working right.  I have compiled it dozens of times now and hopefully I can distill what you need to do down to a minimal set which others will find useful.

First follow setup directions here.

1. Get source and unpack it.
2. Edit the configure script so so that root-config is used instead of guessing randomly.
   Specifically:
   1. configure:20563 should read: ROOT_CXXFLAGS=`root-config –cflags`
   2. configure:20567 and 20569 should read: ROOT_CXXFLAGS=`root-config –libs`
3. Create a another directory where the build files will be kept and go to it.
4. Configure: $ ../HippoDraw-1.21.3/configure –prefix=$EXTDIR –with-boost-root=$EXTDIR –with-boost-libname=boost_python-gcc41-mt –with-boost-version=1_36 –disable-help –enable-numpybuild –with-root-lib=$ROOTSYS/lib –with-root-include=$ROOTSYS/include –with-cfitsio-include=$EXTDIR/include –with-cfitsio-lib=$EXTDIR
5. Make: $ make -j2
6. Install: $ make install

Here is a block quote version for easier cut/pasting:

mkdir hippo
cd hippo
../HippoDraw-1.21.3/configure --prefix=$EXTDIR --with-boost-root=$EXTDIR --with-boost-libname=boost_python-gcc41-mt --with-boost-version=1_36 --without-Qt-dir --disable-help --enable-numpybuild --with-root-lib=$ROOTSYS/lib --with-root-include=$ROOTSYS/include --with-cfitsio-include=$EXTDIR/include --with-cfitsio-lib=$EXTDIR/lib
make -j2
make install

Direct dependencies:
python
cfitsio
ROOT
boost
numpy