MRG Interactive Developments

Mesoscale Research Group, McGill University

MetCal and the SPA - Meteorologial Diagnostics Package
(MRG_MetCal Version 1.0.0)

  • New SourceForge MetCal/SPA Home Page
  • Before Installing
  • Intallation
  • Troubleshooting
  • Development
  • Download Latest Source
  • Online Documentation
  • Download Manual (PDF)
  • Bug Reports


    • Before Installing

    Requirements: The code for MRG MetCal was originally written for the IRIX 6.5 operating system. Use of GNU automated configuration utilities and the libtool library manager should make porting to other platforms relatively painless. The MRG MetCal library and interface depend optionally on several other libraries and utilities. You will need to have these libraries and utilities available to MRG MetCal and build time for full functionality.

    Compilers

    Required:

  • FORTRAN90 or better - used as the primary coding language.
  • C++ - used primarily in the build process.
  • perl - used as the primary scripting language.

    • Utilities

    Suggested:

  • Tcl/Tk module - required for GUI capability.

    • Libraries

    Suggested:

  • RPN Standard library - for compatibility with RPN Standard files (ARMNLIB).
  • GEMPAK library - for compatibility with GEMPAK files (GEMLIB).
  • NCAR Graphics library - for sounding plotting capability.

    • The environment variables assocaited with the libraries must be valid (for the RPN Standard library: ARMNLIB; for the GEMPAK library: GEMLIB). Although the SPA will generate stub routines so that the archive can survive without all of its sub-libraries, their presence at build-time is strongly suggested (especially the perl/Tk module).


    Installation Instructions

    Download the latest release of MetCal and the SPA to your local machine. This will produce a MRG_MetCal-version.tar.gz file in your destination directory. You must first unzip the file using:

  • gunzip MRG_MetCal-version.tar.gz

    • Next, untar the file using:

  • tar -xvf MRG_MetCal-version.tar

    • This will create a directory MRG_MetCal-version locally. Feel free to remove the tarball at this point to release disk space. Change to the new directory (the root directory for MRG MetCal) and type:

  • ./configure

    • This will poll your system for required elements for the MRG MetCal build. The GNU autoconf and automake packages have been used to facilitate this process. If ./configure should fail to find a necessary component, or if you wish to override default behaviour, type ./configure --help for description of the command-line options of the configuration script. Following the generation of the Makefiles, type:

  • make all

    • This will compile the source - it could take a while depending on the speed of your machine. Next, type:

  • make install

    • to install the binaries, scripts, and source into the destination directories (default to /usr/local). If you haven't done so already, you should enter the destination directory bin to your PATH environment variable.


    Troubleshooting

    If you are upgrading from a previous version of MetCal, be sure to run make uninstall in the root directory of the older distribution. Note that the current pre-release of MRG MetCal does not clean in the /etc subdirectory. This should be cleaned manually until the hooks are in place for proper uninstallation. If you are having trouble installing MRG MetCal, please provide complete documentation with your     bug report.


    Development

    All development for the MetCal/SPA package was performed by the MRG at McGill University. Source code (FORTRAN90 and Perl/Tk) is freely distributed under the GNU Public Licence. Please see a copy of COPYING in the MRG MetCal or in the online documentation for more details and copyright information.

    We encourage you to make improvements to the MRG MetCal source code, and ask that you pass along any improvements, with appropriate documentation, to our MRG MetCal developer.

    We also hope to initiate GNU version of this project. Updated links to the project site will be posted here once they are available.


    Bug Reports

    All bugs found with this pre-production release of MRG_MetCal should be reported to our developer. Please include a description of your platform and full documentation of the problem. If you are able to fix the bug independently, please make the necessary improvements to the code and send them as developments.

    Ron McTaggart-Cowan, MRG developer


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