CASCADe Environment

CASCADe uses the following environment variables:

CASCADE_STORAGE_PATH
  Default path to all functional data needed by the CASCADe
  package.
CASCADE_DATA_PATH
  Default path to all observational data to be analyzed with
  CASCADe.
CASCADE_SAVE_PATH
  Default path to where CASCADe saves all pipeline output.
CASCADE_INITIALIZATION_FILE_PATH:
  Default path to CASCADe pipeline initialization files.
CASCADE_SCRIPTS_PATH
  Default path to the CASCADe data reduction pipeline scripts
  for each observation.
CASCADE_LOG_PATH:
  Default path to the saved CASCADe log files.
CASCADE_WARNINGS
  Switch to show or not show warnings. Can either be 'on'
  or 'off'.

These environment variables control where CASCADe searches and stores all required data. In case the environment variables are not set by the user, CASCADe uses default values defined in the initialize module. The main environment variable is CASCADE_STORAGE_PATH. This environment variable, if not set by the user has a default value of <user_home_directory>/CASCADeSTORAGE/. All other path settings stored in the other environment variables are set relative to this, so in principle does the user only need to set the CASCADE_STORAGE_PATH variable to the preferred location, such as a directory on a larger file system rather then in the user home directory. The CASCADE_DATA_PATH, CASCADE_SAVE_PATH, CASCADE_INITIALIZATION_FILE_PATH, CASCADE_SCRIPTS_PATH and CASCADE_LOG_PATH are set by default to data/, results/, init_files/, scripts/ and logs/, respectively, all relative to the path defined by CASCADE_STORAGE_PATH. The CASCADE_WARNINGS variable is by default set to “on” to show possible warnings generated by the CASCADe code.

Setting environment Variables

To set an environment veriable you can use the following shell commands on Linux or MAC OS:

export CASCADE_WARNINGS=off

Or in a Windows environment:

set CASCADE_WARNINGS=off

Alternatively one could set the environment variables in a python script before importing CASCADe:

import os
os.environ['CASCADE_WARNINGS']='off'

import cascade

Warning

Note that in the latter case the environment varables MUST be defined before importing cascade.