Installing Cactus. (1) Download and install sonLib. See https://github.com/benedictpaten/sonLib (2) Download and install jobTree. See https://github.com/benedictpaten/jobTree (3) Download and install tokyo cabinet. See http://fallabs.com/tokyocabinet/ (4) [optional] Download and install kyoto tycoon. See http://fallabs.com/kyototycoon/ (5) Download and install lastz. See http://www.bx.psu.edu/~rsharris/lastz/ NOTE, to use cactus_lastzRepeatMaxk.py preprocessor, you must instead: Download and install LATEST lastz. See http://www.bx.psu.edu/~rsharris/lastz/newer/ Add lastz's /tools directory to your path (only required for repeatmasking) (6) Install networkx and psutil python packages: easy_install networkx easy_install psutil (7) Place the directory containing Cactus on your python path, i.e. PYTHONPATH=${PYTHONPATH}:FOO where FOO/sonLib is the path to the base directory of Cactus. (8) Compile the C code: Modify the include.mk file to point at where you installed sonLib. In cactus type 'make all' (9) [optional, but required if you want all tests to pass] Download the dataset http://dl.dropbox.com/u/156669/datasets.tar.bz2 and create an environment variable SON_TRACE_DATASETS to point at it. (10) Run python allTests.py to run the set of tests to check the installation See https://github.com/benedictpaten/ for links to the dependencies mentioned.