Source Code for UCSF Chimera
The links on this page provide software developers interested in writing extensions to Chimera with access to all of the UCSF-developed Chimera source code. This allows extension writers to see exactly how Chimera works. Note, however, that most of Chimera (~85%) is written in Python, and the Python source is automatically included with every Chimera distribution (see subdirectories of chimera/share or, on OS X systems, Chimera.app/Contents/Resources/share).
It is currently not possible to re-compile a fully functional Chimera from the source code distributed here because we do not include the proprietary solvent-accessible molecular surfacing library, MSMS, developed by Michel Sanner and licensed separately by Scripps Research Institute. In addition, creating a full build-from-source copy of Chimera is a lot of work and depends on getting a bunch of things in the build environment set up just right for your particular platform. Currently we do not have any documentation describing the build environment or procedure.
The distributions below with "headers" in the name contain the C++ and C header files for Chimera and third party packages used to build Chimera. The Python header file pyconfig.h depends on the operating system while all others are the same for all operating systems. The distributions with "source" in the name include both the Python and C++ Chimera source code. The distributions with "foreign" in the name consist of approximately 25 third party packages used by Chimera. You will probably not need these foreign packages to understand how Chimera works.
Chimera source code is covered by the same license agreement as our Chimera binary distributions.
Source Date Size Notes chimera-1.2349-osx_x11_intel-headers.tar.gz March 2, 2007 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages. For compilation on Mac 10.4. chimera-1.2349-osx_x11_ppc-headers.tar.gz March 2, 2007 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages. Used for compilation on Mac 10.4 targeting 10.3.9. chimera-1.2349-linux-headers.tar.gz March 2, 2007 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages chimera-1.2350-linux64-headers.tar.gz March 2, 2007 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages chimera-1.2318-source.tar.gz December 12, 2006 23 Mb Chimera C++ and Python code chimera-1.2318-osx_x11_ppc-headers.tar.gz January 4, 2007 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages chimera-1.2318-linux-headers.tar.gz December 12, 2006 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages chimera-1.2318-foreign.tar.gz December 12, 2006 118 Mb Third party packages used by Chimera chimera-1.2199-source.tar.gz February 17, 2006 22 Mb Chimera C++ and Python code chimera-1.2199-foreign.tar.gz February 17, 2006 120 Mb Third party packages used by Chimera chimera-1.2199-osx_x11-headers.tar.gz February 17, 2006 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages. Used for compilation on Mac 10.4 targeting 10.3.9. chimera-1.2199-linux-headers.tar.gz February 17, 2006 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages chimera-1.2197-osx10_3_x11-headers.tar.gz January 6, 2006 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages chimera-1.2186-osx_x11-headers.tar.gz November 10, 2005 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages chimera-1.2184-osx_x11-headers.tar.gz November 3, 2005 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages chimera-1.2183-linux-headers.tar.gz October 25, 2005 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages chimera-1.2181-tru64-headers.tar.gz October 24, 2005 1 Mb Header files for Chimera and third party packages chimera-1.2129-source.tar.gz June 2, 2005 25 Mb Chimera C++ and Python code chimera-1.2129-foreign.tar.gz June 2, 2005 200 Mb Third party packages used by Chimera