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 described here works for Met.3D 1.7 (note that is does not work with the 1.6 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).
If you haven't done so yet, you need to install conda first. Here, we use the miniconda distribution. We recommend to install miniconda into a directory that provides enough disk space (default is in you home directory, you may want to use a different directory).
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 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 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://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/netcdf/ftp/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 http://www.naturalearthdata.com/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/50m/physical/ne_50m_coastline.zip unzip ne_50m_coastline.zip wget http://www.naturalearthdata.com/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/50m/cultural/ne_50m_admin_0_boundary_lines_land.zip unzip ne_50m_admin_0_boundary_lines_land.zip wget http://www.naturalearthdata.com/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/50m/raster/HYP_50M_SR_W.zip unzip HYP_50M_SR_W.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.
Unfortunately, there is no conda package for QtCreator, hence the system installation needs to be used (Ubuntu and OpenSuSE provide QtCreator through their package managers). When using the above conda environment for development, you need to make sure that QtCreator sees the correct development paths.
- Start QtCreator from the command line within the activated "met3d" conda environment
- Open the Met.3D project (File → Open File or Project → Select Met.3D's CMakeLists.txt)
- Click "Manage Kits" → Make sure that all tools in the correct PATH are used (i.e., gcc, gdb, etc. from the conda environment - in some attempts, a "wrong" gdb was selected by default)
- Click "Make default" for "Qt 5.12.9 in PATH (met3d) - temporary" (or whichever Qt version is current as you read this)
- Possibly adjust the Debug and Release paths for the Met.3D binaries
- Click "Configure Project"
- In the "Build Settings":
- In "CMake", set CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH to ~/met.3d-base/local
- In "Build Steps", add "-j 12" (or however many core you have available) to build arguments for parallel compilation
- In the "Run Settings":
- Change the Met.3D working directory to point to the source directory
- Add the MET3D_BASE and MET3D_HOME environment variables
- (Note on the code model analyzer: QtCreator by default uses Clang to analyze the code. On my Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, clang is installed from the Ubuntu system but not in the conda environment above. This seems to interfere, and QtCreator displays a number of error messages related to not finding system files. I switched off the plugins "C++/ClangCodeModel" and "Code Analyzer/ClangTools" in the Help/About plugins dialog to make the error message disappear. An alternative could be to install clang in the conda environment, or to compile QtCreator from source in the conda environment.)