#BEASTling

A linguistics-focussed command line tool for generating BEAST XML files. Only BEAST 2.x is supported.

BEASTling is written in Python. Python versions 2.7 and 3.4+ are supported. It is available from the Python Package Index, aka "the Cheeseshop". This means you can install it easily using easy_install or pip. Otherwise, you can clone this repo and use the setup.py file included to install.

BEASTling has a few dependencies. If you use easy_install or pip, they should be taken care of automatically for you. If you are installing manually, you will also have to manually install the dependencies before BEASTling will work. The dependencies are:

• appdirs
• clldutils
• newick
• six

BEASTling will run without BEAST installed, but it won't be very useful. Therefore, you should install the latest version of BEAST 2. Old BEAST 1.x versions are not supported. Note that recent BEAST 2.x releases depend upon Java 8. They will not work with Java 7. So, you should install the latest version of Java for your platform first.

BEAST 2 is a modular program, with a small, simple core and additional packages which can be installed to add functionality. Managing packages is easy and can be done with a GUI. You should install the following packages, as BEASTling makes use of them for much of its functionality:

• BEAST_CLASSIC
• BEASTLabs
• morph-models

In summary:

1. Install/upgrade Python. You need 2.7 or 3.4+
2. Install BEASTling (plus dependencies if not using pip etc.).
3. Install/upgrade Java. You need Java 8.
4. Install/upgrade BEAST. You need BEAST 2.
5. Install required BEAST packages.
6. Profit.

Bug reports, feature requests and pull requests are all welcome.