Setting up ROOT

(5 minutes)

Before you start using ROOT, you often have to set it up:

  • If you’re not using one of the Nevis particle-physics systems, hopefully you have received instructions on how to set up ROOT at your site. Now is the time to follow those directions.

  • If you had to install ROOT on your own you already know whatever special set-up you need on your local computer.

  • If you are using one of the particle-physics systems at Nevis, no special set-up is needed.

Nevis specifics

There’s an alternative distribution of the ROOT software on the Nevis particle-physics systems that’s available with this command:

conda activate /usr/nevis/conda/root

This modifies your UNIX environment to use a more full-featured ROOT setup than I was able to install natively on our standard Linux installations. If you have difficulty running ROOT on your workgroup’s server, you may to try that conda command.

Working-group specifics

Even at Nevis, some physics groups work with software frameworks that have their own versions of ROOT built-in; e.g., Athena in ATLAS or LArSoft in MicroBooNE. If you’re working with such a framework, you’ll have a special set-up command to use.