Quick Installation

Basic installation:

$ pip install lalsuite

Optional dependencies:

• Packages needed by LALInference for Bayesian inference data analysis e.g. GWDataFind, GWpy:

  $ pip install lalsuite[lalinference]
  

• Packages needed by LALPulsar for pulsar and continuous wave gravitational wave data analysis, e.g. solar system ephemerides:

  $ pip install lalsuite[lalpulsar]
  

• Packages needed for testing:

  $ pip install lalsuite[test]
  

Possible issues:

• ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement lalsuite (from versions: none)
  ERROR: No matching distribution found for lalsuite
  

  This error may mean that the system you are trying to install on has a version of the C library (glibc) which is too old and is no longer supported by the LALSuite packages available on PyPI. You can check this by running ldd --version, noting the version of glibc it reports, and comparing it to the versions of glibc of the available LALSuite packages. The latter can be found under the Release files tab, in the Platform column.

Overview

LALSuite is a collection of data analysis routines whose primary application is to search for and characterize astrophysical signals in gravitational-wave time series data, in particular from ground-based detectors such as LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA.

LALSuite is primarily written in C following the ISO/IEC 9899:1999 standard, more commonly referred to as C99. It provides libraries written in C99, with language bindings available for Python and Octave. It also provides command-line applications written in C99 and Python.

LALSuite is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.

• Project homepage
• Installation instructions
• Frequently asked questions
• Reference documentation
• Building from source
• Contributing guide

Acknowledgment

We request that any academic report, publication, or other academic disclosure of results derived from the use of this software acknowledge the use of the software by an appropriate acknowledgment or citation.

The LALSuite software suite as a whole may be linked to using the DOI 10.7935/GT1W-FZ16, or cited using the following BibTeX entry:

@misc{lalsuite,
    author         = "{LIGO Scientific Collaboration}
                      and {Virgo Collaboration}
                      and {KAGRA Collaboration}",
    title          = "{LVK} {A}lgorithm {L}ibrary - {LALS}uite",
    howpublished   = "Free software (GPL)",
    doi            = "10.7935/GT1W-FZ16",
    year           = "2018"
}

If you make use of the Python/Octave interfaces to LALSuite, please cite the following paper:

@article{swiglal,
    title     = "{SWIGLAL}: {P}ython and {O}ctave interfaces to the
                 {LALSuite} gravitational-wave data analysis libraries}",
    author    = "Karl Wette",
    journal   = "SoftwareX",
    volume    = "12",
    pages     = "100634",
    year      = "2020",
    doi       = "10.1016/j.softx.2020.100634"
}

In addition, some codes contained in LALSuite may be directly based on one or several scientific papers, which should be cited when using those specific codes; some of these can be discovered through the documentation.

Components

LALSuite is comprised of the following components:

• LAL: Core gravitational wave analysis routines
• LALFrame: LAL wrapping of the LIGO/Virgo Frame library
• LALMetaIO: LAL wrapping of the MetaIO LIGO_LW XML library
• LALSimulation: LAL routines for gravitational waveform and noise generation
• LALBurst: LAL routines for burst gravitational wave data analysis
• LALInspiral: LAL routines for inspiral and ringdown CBC gravitational wave data analysis
• LALInference: LAL routines for Bayesian inference data analysis
• LALPulsar: LAL routines for pulsar and continuous wave gravitational wave data analysis
• LALApps: Collection of gravitational wave data analysis codes and pipelines utilising the LAL libraries

Project Librarians

• Adam Mercer
• Duncan Macleod
• Karl Wette

The librarians may be contacted via the help desk.

Documentation

Installation instructions and answers to frequently asked questions may be found on the LALSuite wiki.

The reference documentation for all LALSuite components is generated using Doxygen. Documentation is available for the latest development version of LALSuite, and for recent releases.

The LAL Specification and Style Guide document (commonly known as the LAL Spec) contains the software specifications that code written for LALSuite should conform to. The most recent version of the LAL Spec can be found here.

Releases

The latest release is LALSuite 8.0.1, released 12 November 2026 (source tarball), which is comprised of:

• LAL 8.0.1, released 12 November 2026 (source tarball)
• LALFrame 3.1.1, released 12 November 2026 (source tarball)
• LALMetaIO 4.1.1, released 12 November 2026 (source tarball)
• LALSimulation 7.0.1, released 12 November 2026 (source tarball)
• LALBurst 3.0.1, released 12 November 2026 (source tarball)
• LALInspiral 5.1.1, released 12 November 2026 (source tarball)
• LALInference 5.0.1, released 12 November 2026 (source tarball)
• LALPulsar 8.0.1, released 12 November 2026 (source tarball)
• LALApps 11.0.0, released 31 October 2026 (source tarball)

Previous releases can be found by visiting the IGWN analysis software source code server.

Docker Images

Docker images of the latest development snapshot, as well as recent releases, of LALSuite are available from Docker Hub. Images of the latest development snapshot, and the most recent release, are updated weekly.

Sources

The LALSuite sources are located in the LALSuite Git repository. See here for how to get started.

Mailing Lists

There are several mailing lists related to LALSuite development:

• LAL Announce: General LALSuite announcements, including releases (subscribe/unsubscribe, archive)
• LAL Discuss: Discussions of modifying/using LALSuite (subscribe/unsubscribe, archive)
• Computing Discuss: General IGWN Computing discussion (subscribe/unsubscribe, archive)

Developers should subscribe to the LAL Discuss and Computing Discuss mailing lists as important development information is regularly posted and discussed on these lists.

Reporting Issues

If you have ligo.org authentication, please report issues directly through GitLab. Otherwise, you can use the help desk to send bug reports by e-mail.

Before you file a ticket, please read and search through the list of current and previous issues to determine if your bug has already been reported.

If an issue already exists and has not been fixed, add any additional information to the existing report. If your bug exists and has been fixed, upgrade to the version detailed in the issue to confirm if it has been fixed correctly. If it was not, please reopen the issue.

Please include as much detail as possible to reproduce the error, including information about your operating system and the version of each (relevant) component of LALSuite. If possible, please include a brief, self-contained code example that demonstrates the problem.

Note that when an issue is marked as Confidential, currently this means that most internal users will also not be able to see it, but only a small number of people with reporter, developer or maintainer status.

Contributing

The guide to contributing to LALSuite explains how to contribute fixes or new features using the fork and pull workflow. Please read and follow these directions.

Notes on Ancient History

Notes on ancient history may be found here.