Let's assume that you have fetched the appropriate executables archives (if any) for your machine, together with the Documentation and Sources archive.

These archives are not simply a single executable for general use. Instead they are a (large) number of files, squished together into one file, and thus called an "archive". You have to go through a step which involves getting all the files out of the archive and into a folder on your machine.

We will give these instructions for four different kinds of systems, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux or Unix systems, and Mac OS 8 or 9. Then we will describe how to access the documentation after installing the package.

Our main method of distributing PHYLIP for Windows systems is in a self-extracting archive. A self-extracting archive has a small self-extraction program on its front, and when you run them as programs they extract themselves and write many files into your folder.

On the Windows system you will have a self-extracting archive called phylip-3.69.exe. Place it in a folder where you will want PHYLIP to reside. After it self-extracts, it will make a folder called phylip-3.69 there, in the folder where you place the self-extracting archive. So if you place the archive on the Desktop, it will make that folder there.

To self-extract the archive simply double-click on it. If your Windows system does not allow the archive to self-extract, you may have to right-click on the archive and select "Run as administrator". Accept the default settings, making sure that it will extract into the folder that you want it in, and when a dialog box comes up, click on Unzip. When the extraction is complete, select Close. You will find the folder phylip-3.69 in the same place as the archive.

After the self-extraction is done, you will find the phylip-3.69 folder which has three folders within it, called doc, exe, and src. There is also a web page phylip.html. You should read this in your browser. It contains links to the main documentation web page main.html and to the other documentation pages and programs.

Note: There has been a report that on Windows Vista (specifically the report was for Service Pack 2 on Home Edition) that if you extract the files into a folder that is somewhere under Program Files, they may not work properly. You can avoid this problem if you extract them into a folder which is somewhere in your own folders.

The archives for Intel iMac and PowerMac Mac OS X are in the Apple .dmg disk image format. There is one .dmg disk image distributed. It is 6.8 Megabytes in size, and is compressed; when uncompressed it is several times larger. (Note that Mac OS X version 10.0 did not support compressed disk image files, so the .dmg file we distribute will not work on it).

It contains what looks like a normal folder called phylip-3.69, but you should not use the programs while they are in that folder. It is important that you use a copy of the contents of the disk image elsewhere on your system. Decide where the folder phylip-3.69 is going to reside, and copy that folder to that new location. Within it is all the source code, documentation, and executables.

The executables are 32-bit "universal binaries" that will run on either the newer iMacs (which has Intel processors) or the older G3's, G4's or G5's that have PowerMac processors. (Basically they are each simply a pair of executables set up so that the processor chooses the right one and runs it).

There is also a set of links in the exe folder to enable you to run the programs by simply typing their name. If these are absent, which they should not be, there is one additional set of steps you need to do:

1. Open a Terminal window (which you will find in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder).
2. At the prompt, change to the folder where the PHYLIP executables are kept. For example, if you have folder phylip-3.69 on your desktop, type in the command
     cd Desktop/phylip-3.69/exe
3. Change the permissions of the script linkmac which you will find there to allow it to execute:
     chmod +x linkmac
4. Then execute the script by typing:   ./linkmac

This setting up of these links needs to done only once, and they will be available thereafter.

You can easily install PHYLIP and compile it yourself on a Linux or Unix system, provided that you have a C compiler on your system. (On some Linux systems and in some recent versions of Mac OS X the C compiler is not installed by default, and you may have to make sure that it is installed).

The archive for Linux or Unix systems is just the Documentation and Sources archive. You can extract the files from the archive by putting it into a folder by itself, getting into that folder, and giving the command

gunzip phylip-3.69.tar.gz

Now just issue the command

tar xvf phylip-3.69.tar

To make executables, use your C compiler. It is probably as simple as going into the src directory and typing the command

    make install

Compiling on Ubuntu (or other Debian-family) Linux

I have found that to compile PHYLIP 3.69 on an Ubuntu system, and presumably on other Debian-family Linux releases, you need to load some X11 libraries before compiling. Try the following:

1. Make sure you have enough administrative privileges for the following (or go get the help of those that do).
2. Load the X11, Xt and Xaw libraries by doing these commands:

   sudo apt-get install libX11-dev
   sudo apt-get install libxt-dev
   sudo apt-get install libxaw7-dev
   

3. If all those installations work, you can then get into the src folder, and as indicated above, just execute the command

       make install
   

We don't think there are many Mac OS 8 or Mac OS 9 machines around any more -- Apple has abandoned that operating system, and it is probably not wise to use it on the Internet as it has not been upgraded to cope with recent security threats. We no longer distribute Mac OS 8 or 9 executables for our most recent versions of PHYLIP. Nevertheless, we do make available a Stuffit (.sit) archive of executables for PHYLIP 3.65, just in case anyone needs it.

Downloading the single Stuffit archive

The archives for Mac OS 8, Mac OS 9 Macintoshes are self-extracting archives. If you are fetching the files using a Web browser directly from your Mac, it will probably automatically invoke Stuffit Expander to unpack the archives into self-extracting archives. Self-extracting archives are archives with a small self-extraction program on their front, so that when they are run as programs they write a great many files into a folder.

Our default distribution is of a single large (4.9 Megabyte) Stuffit archive called phylip3.65.sit. This should automatically be unstuffed as it is downloaded. It contains the source code, documentation, and Mac OS executables.

However, at the moment we have reports of trouble running the unstuffed archives. Recent versions of Mac OS 9, and also the Classic environment under Mac OS X, seem to regard the executables files as text files, and they try to open them under SimpleText, which of course does not work.

Downloading multiple smaller Stuffit archives

Some people may wish instead to download these as a series of four archives. This might be necessary, for example, if you wanted to transfer them to a machine that was not connected to the Internet, and needed them each to be small enough to write onto a floppy disk.

If you choose to download these instead of the single Stuffit archive, and our system does automatically invoke Stuffit Expander, four self extracting archives will be created on your desktop, and their file names will end in .sit. If you have Stuffit Expander, you can use it to expand them.

Once the archives are downloaded and extracted, they will put folders on the desktop. One is called phylip and contains folders doc and src as well as a web page phylip.html. There are 307 files in all, as these include the documentation files, source code files, and compilation support files. You may have to be patient while the archive is being extracted.

The three archives of Macintosh Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 executables will create folders exe, exe.1, exe.2 and exe.3 on the desktop when they are extracted. For some reason we could not create these inside the phylip folder, but that is where these files need to be put. Do the following:

1. Move the exe folder inside the phylip folder.
2. Open the exe.1 folder, and mark all of its files (you can do this using the Select All menu option in the system Edit menu).
3. Drag this group of marked files into the exe folder which is now inside the phylip folder.
4. Now do the same for exe.2 (mark the files and drag them into exe).
5. And do the same for exe.3 (mark the files and drag them into exe).
6. You can now discard the folders exe.1, exe.2 and exe.3 (if any). If you have four folders named phylip3.65.0.sit, exe.1.sit, exe.2.sit, and exe.3.sit on your desktop, these can be discarded too.
7. The phylip3.65 folder can now be moved to wherever you want it to be.

The main folder contains a web page, phylip.html. You should start by reading it (either by clicking on it to activate your browser, or calling it to the attention of your browser in some other way such as drag-and-drop). It contains links to the documentation web pages, including the main documention page main.html, which you should read.

Executables packages are also available from others. For the moment, these are for earlier versions of PHYLIP (such as 3.61 and 3.68). They include executables for Red Hat Linux, Debian Linux, NetBSD Unix for Intel-compatible processors, and FreeBSD Unix. For links see our downloads page.

... to the PHYLIP home page