The following message was emailed to all registered Phaser users on 1 June 2005:

Phaser version 1.2 was meant to expire on 1 July 2005, but at least three of you have noticed that it has expired prematurely today (because the wrong number for the month was given in the source code!). We are very near to releasing the standalone version 1.3, which we consider sufficiently mature that it will no longer have an expiry date, but it is not quite ready to release.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Until the standalone Phaser-1.3 is released, we suggest the following options:

1. Go to http://www.phenix-online.org and download the current release of Phenix, which contains nearly the same version of Phaser-1.3 that will soon be released in standalone form. This download is free for academics. You can run phaser through Phenix or through command line scripts (documentation at http://www-structmed.cimr.cam.ac.uk/phaser/documentation/phaser-1.3.html). To run it from the ccp4i interface you will either have to edit the scripts slightly using "Run&View Com File" (primarily changing "MR_RTP" to "MR_AUTO") or wait for the standalone release, which will contain an updated version of the GUI.

2. Download the installer release for version 1.2, change the date in the file Version.h in the root phaser directory, and recompile. Note added 9 June 2005: These instructions were a bit too cryptic. Install as outlined in the README-installer file. Source the setup file, <install-path>/phaser-1.2/phaser_env. Edit the file Version.h in <install-path>/phaser-1.2/phaser. Then cd to <install-path>/phaser-1.2/build/<platform> and recompile with the command libtbx.scons.

3. E-mail us (cimr-phaser@lists.cam.ac.uk), and we can e-mail you a statically-linked executable for Linux (but not for other platforms).

Changing the date on your computer would also work, but would probably cause more problems than it is worth!

Once again our apologies, and we look forward to announcing the official release of version 1.3 in the near future.

The Phaser Team