This page describes how Met.3D can be compiled from its source code using conda under Linux. If you would like to simply use the software, please use the precompiled binary package instead. If you would like to use a specific branch, or change parts of the source code yourself, this page is for you.

System requirements

You require an OpenGL 4.3 (or higher) capable graphics card and an appropriate Linux driver to run Met.3D. The driver will most likely be a proprietary driver (we've only tested Nvidia so far); open-source drivers for Linux currently do not provide the required capabilities. Before you continue with the installation, make sure that graphics card and driver are installed. If everything is installed correctly, the glxinfo command should output something similar to (the important thing is the OpenGL core profile version > 4.3):

# glxinfo | grep OpenGL

OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GTX TITAN/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 340.96
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.40 NVIDIA via Cg compiler

Note: So far we've only been able to test Nvidia drivers. Met.3D uses an Nvidia-specific OpenGL extension that queries the available GPU memory. If you are using a different driver and get an error message stating "GPU memory limit: 0 kb" then your driver unfortunately won't work at the moment. However, since Met.3D is meant to be an open-source community project: If you are a programmer and would like to help resolve this issue, please let us know!

Overview

Our recommended approach to compile Met.3D from source and/or to set up a development environment under Linux is using conda. The conda system provides package management that is independent from your Linux system and safely keeps all packages in an environment. This way, everything you install for Met.3D will not interfere with your base system. Also, using conda is independent of your Linux distribution, hence the described approach should work with any Linux distribution and version.

The installation procedure described here works for Met.3D 1.7 and higher versions (note that is it does not work with for the 1.6 and earlier versions).

Most dependencies for Met.3D are available as conda packages. After you have created a new conda environment for Met.3D (Step 1), you need to install these dependencies (Step 2). Some dependencies are not (yet) available via conda and need to be installed from source (Step 3). Once this is completed, Met.3D sources can be checked out from the git repository and be compiled (Step 4).

...

wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
chmod +x Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
./Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh

Setting up a development environment and compiling Met.3D

Step 1: Create and activate a fresh conda environment

conda create -n met3d
conda activate met3d

Step 2: Install dependencies and development packages

Note: The following installation command may take a while, since all packages need to be downloaded and installed.

conda install -c conda-forge cxx-compiler fortran-compiler make cmake pkg-config gdb glew log4cplus libgdal eccodes netcdf-cxx4 freetype gsl proj qt git mesa-libgl-devel-cos7-x86_64 mesa-dri-drivers-cos7-aarch64 libxau-devel-cos7-aarch64 libselinux-devel-cos7-aarch64 libxdamage-devel-cos7-aarch64 libxxf86vm-devel-cos7-aarch64 libxext-devel-cos7-aarch64 xorg-libxfixes xorg-libxau 

(Step 2a: Starting with version 1.12, Met.3D includes a rudimentary Python interface and requires the following additional dependencies)

conda install -c conda-forge python pybind11 eigen

Step 3: Manual installation of dependencies not available via conda

# Create a "met.3d-base" directory in your home directory, with sub-dirs "local" and "third-party".
cd ~
mkdir met.3d-base && cd met.3d-base
mkdir local
mkdir third-party

# Checkout and install glfx.
cd ~/met.3d-base/third-party/ 
git clone https://github.com/maizensh/glfx.git
cd glfx
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=~/met.3d-base/local CMakeLists.txt
make -j 12
make install

# Download and install QCustomPlot (download packages from website):
cd ~/met.3d-base/third-party/
wget https://www.qcustomplot.com/release/2.1.0fixed/QCustomPlot.tar.gz
wget https://www.qcustomplot.com/release/2.1.0fixed/QCustomPlot-sharedlib.tar.gz
tar xvfz QCustomPlot.tar.gz
tar xvfz QCustomPlot-sharedlib.tar.gz
mv qcustomplot-sharedlib/ qcustomplot/

cd qcustomplot/qcustomplot-sharedlib/sharedlib-compilation/
qmake
make -j 12
cp libqcustomplot* ~/met.3d-base/local/lib/
cd ../..
cp qcustomplot.h ~/met.3d-base/local/include/

# NetCDF4 C++ API is not available in latest version from conda.
cd ~/met.3d-base/third-party/
wget https://downloads.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf-cxx/4.3.1/netcdf-cxx4-4.3.1.tar.gz
tar xf netcdf-cxx4-4.3.1.tar.gz
cd netcdf-cxx4-4.3.1
# !! Change <your user> to the correct path in the following command:
./configure --prefix=/home/<your user>/met.3d-base/local
make -j 12
make install

# section C), download remaining third-party dependencies
cd ~/met.3d-base/third-party
git clone https://github.com/qtproject/qt-solutions.git
 
wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/freefont/freefont-ttf-20120503.zip
unzip freefont-ttf-20120503.zip
 
mkdir naturalearth
cd naturalearth
wget httphttps://wwwnaciscdn.naturalearthdata.com/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/downloadorg/naturalearth/50m/physical/ne_50m_coastline.zip
unzip ne_50m_coastline.zip
wget httphttps://wwwnaciscdn.naturalearthdata.comorg/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/naturalearth/50m/cultural/ne_50m_admin_0_boundary_lines_land.zip
unzip ne_50m_admin_0_boundary_lines_land.zip
wget httphttps://wwwnaciscdn.naturalearthdata.comorg/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/naturalearth/50m/raster/HYP_50M_SR_W.zip
unzip HYP_50M_SR_W.zip

# section D), download remaining but optional third-party dependencies
cd ~/met.3d-base/third-party
wget https://zenodo.org/record/5501399/files/ScientificColourMaps7.zip
unzip ScientificColourMaps7.zip

Step 4: Checkout and compile Met.3D

cd ~/met.3d-base/
git clone https://gitlab.com/wxmetvis/met.3d.git
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=~/met.3d-base/local ../met.3d
make -j 12

Running Met.3D

# Make sure your "met3d" conda environment is activated!
# The Met.3D binary is now located at "~/met.3d-base/build/". To run:
cd ~/met.3d-base/build/
MET3D_HOME=~/met.3d-base/met.3d MET3D_BASE=~/met.3d-base ./Met3D

Using QtCreator within the conda envionment for development

This section is only relevant if you want to contribute to Met.3D development using the QtCreator IDE.

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