gmt-fork/README

$Id$

== Information for installing GMT 5 ==

Note: The build system has recently been switched to CMake which is a
cross-platform system for managing the build process. If you are familiar
with the old GNU Build Tools (automake, autoconf, and configure) you can
probably skip over to the CMake quick start guide in README.CMake.


Introduction
------------

You do not need to read these instructions unless you plan to build and
install the programs manually.

GMT has been installed successfully under UNIX/Linux/OS X on workstations.  It
also installs under Windows and in UNIX emulators such as Cygwin or on virtual
machines.  We anticipate few problems if you are installing the package on
other platforms.

Note there are three GMT tar archives available (#3 is optional):

1. gmt-5.x.x.tar.bz2:          The GMT 5 distribution
2. gshhg-gmt-nc4-2.x.x.tar.gz: All five resolutions of GSHHG coastline data
3. dcw-gmt-1.x.x.tar.bz2:      Digital Chart of the World polygon data

The archives are available in bzip2 (*.bz2) and gzip (*.gz) formats.
If you do not have bzip2 installed you can obtain source or executables
from http://www.bzip.org.

For Windows users there are separate Windows installers available; this
discussion only considers UNIX/Linux/OS X installations. Windows users who
which to build GMT from the sources refer to README.WIN32.


CMake
-----

Install CMake (>=2.8.5) from http://www.cmake.org/cmake/resources/software.html


Install netCDF library
----------------------

For all major Linux distributions there are prepackaged development binaries
available. netCDF is also available on MacOSX trough the macports and fink
package managers.

Otherwise, get netCDF from http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/netcdf/.
You need at least version 4.0 with netCDF-4/HDF5 data model support (do not
disable HDF5/ZLIB in netCDF with --disable-netcdf-4).


GDAL (optional)
---------------

To use the GDAL interface (ability to provide grids or images to be imported
via gdal) you must have the GDAL library and include files installed.  Like
netCDF, GDAL is available through your favorite package manager on many *NIX
systems.


Install support data
--------------------

You can obtain GMT from http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/. Alternatively you may
get GMT from any of the following FTP sites. Try the site that is closest to
you to minimize transmission times:

Site                                    FTP address
--------------------------------------------------------------
SOEST, U. of Hawaii                     ftp.soest.hawaii.edu
Lab for Satellite Altimetry, NOAA       ibis.grdl.noaa.gov
IRIS, Washington, US                    ftp.iris.washington.edu
IAG-USP, U. of Sao Paulo, BRAZIL        ftp.iag.usp.br
Dep. Geology, U. in Oslo, NORWAY        ftp.geologi.uio.no
ISV, Hokkaido U, Sapporo, JAPAN         ftp.eos.hokudai.ac.jp
GDS, Vienna U. of Technology, AUSTRIA   gd.tuwien.ac.at
TENET, Tertiary Education & Research Networks, SOUTH AFRICA
                                        gmt.mirror.ac.za

The development sources are available from the subversion repository at
svn://gmtserver.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt5/trunk

Extract the files and put them in a separate directory (need not be
where you eventually want to install GMT).


Configuring
-----------

GMT can be build on any platform supported by CMake.  CMake is a
cross-platform, open-source system for managing the build process.
Refer to README.CMake for further details.  In the source tree copy
cmake/ConfigUserTemplate.cmake to cmake/ConfigUser.cmake and edit
the file according to your demands.

By default, GMT will use Dave Watson's Delaunay triangulation routine.
However, a much faster alternative is available from Jonathan Shewchuk, but
his routine is not distributed under the GNU Public License.  If you work for
a for-profit organization you should read Shewchuk's copyright statement (in
src/triangle.c) first.  If you agree with the license terms you can enable
Shewchuk's triangulation routine in cmake/ConfigUser.cmake.

At run-time, GMT will initialize all default variables by reading either the
share/gmtdefaults_SI or the share/gmtdefaults_US file.  Both are installed,
and the one that is read is given by the file share/gmt.conf.  This file will
have either SI or US as the first two columns on a line.  SI is default. You
can configure the default at build time in cmake/ConfigUser.cmake.

The default values differ slightly between SI and US, mostly because it is
inconvenient to convert, say, 1" to 2.54 cm; we use 2.5 cm instead.  Although
strongly discouraged, if you want to make permanent changes to some of the
defaults you can edit the gmtdefaults_{SI,US} files directly.  A much better
approach is to create a gmt.conf file in your home directory and edit those
settings since GMT will check for that file before loading system defaults
(actually, it will first look in the current directory, then the home
directory, and then finally in share).  See the gmtdefaults man page for a
description of all defaults.

To prevent two GMT processes writing to the same gmt.conf file simultaneously
(thereby corrupting it), GMT can implement the POSIX advisory file locking
scheme and sets and releases locks on these files.  This might not be reliable
when the files reside in directories on network filesystems, such as NFS.
Whether flock works on network filesystems is implementation dependent.  If
you want to activate file locking you may enable it in cmake/ConfigUser.cmake.

By default, both GMT and all its supplements are built.  You can turn
off all supplements via the BUILD_SUPPLEMENTS setting in ConfigUsers.cmake

The top-level installation directory is configured with the variable
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX.

Now that you made your configuration choices it is time for invoking CMake.
Create a subdirectory where the build files will be generated, e.g., in the
source tree 'mkdir build'.

In the build subdirectory, type

  cmake [options] ..

Append any of the options explained above as you see fit.  If CMake cannot
figure out all the dependent libraries or required compiler and linker flags
it will give you a message and you will be asked to edit
cmake/ConfigUser.cmake.


Build GMT
---------

In the build directory, type

  make

which will compile all the programs.  After a successful compilation you may
install the executables in the designated bin directory with the command

  make install

After a successful install you can have the object files and the local
executables removed by saying

  make clean

or just remove the entire build directory.


Documentation
_____________

The documentation is available online at http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/
or as platform independent package that you can install along with GMT.

The GMT documentation includes HTML files for online browsing, user guide,
cookbook, and manual pages. The Documentation also contains the
GMT_Tutorial.pdf file which is a short course in how to use GMT.  It can be
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
still missing!
followed individually or in a lab setting by a group of users.

The development sources from subversion do not contain the precompiled
documentation. The manuals, HTML pages, and PDFs have to be created from
source with Sphinx (see README.CMake).


Set path
--------

Make sure users set their PATH to include the directory containing
the GMT executables (BINDIR) if this is not a standard directory
like /usr/local/bin.  You should now be able to run GMT programs.


GMT supplemental Code
---------------------

GMT users elsewhere have developed programs that utilize the GMT libraries and
produce PostScript code compatible with the rest of GMT or simply perform data
manipulation.  In addition, misc.  code developed by us depend on GMT
libraries.  Currently, the supplemental archive include the directories:

  gshhs     - Data extractor for GSHHS shoreline polygons.
  img       - Data extractor for Smith/Sandwell altimetry grids.
  meca      - Plotting of focal mechanisms, velocity arrows,
              and error ellipses on maps.
  mgd77     - Programs for handling of native MGD77 files.
  misc      - dimfilter
  segyprogs - Plotting SEGY seismic data sets.
  spotter   - Plate tectonic & kinematics applications.
  x2sys     - Track intersection (crossover) tools.


Misc
----

Before running programs, there are a few things you should do/know:

  - Read carefully the documentation for the gmt system.  This can be
    found as both PDF and HTML files in the doc/pdf|html directories.
    The successful operation of gmt-programs depends directly on your
    understanding of how gmt "works", its option lists, I/O, and composite
    plot mechanisms.  Then, before running individual gmt programs, read
    the associated man page.


A reminder
----------

If you think it is appropriate, you may consider paying us back by including
our latest EOS article (Wessel, P. and W. H. F. Smith, New, improved version
of the Generic Mapping Tools released, EOS Trans.  AGU, 79, 579, 1998, and our
Geophysics article on the gridding algorithm in surface (Smith, W. H. F. and
P. Wessel, Gridding with continuous curvature splines in tension, Geophysics,
55, 293-305, 1990) in the reference list of your future publications that will
benefit from the availability of GMT.


Software support
----------------

You haven't bought anything so you cannot expect full service.  However, if
you find a bug in any of the programs, please report it to us
(http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/) rather than trying to fix it yourself so that
we, and through us, other users may benefit from your find.  Make sure you
provide us with enough information so that we can recreate the problem.

Two mailing lists of interest to GMT users are available:
gmt-group@lists.hawaii.edu allows us to notify registered users in the event
of bugfixes and/or new releases.  A separate mailing list
(gmt-help@lists.hawaii.edu) exists for GMT users who have questions about GMT
installation and usage.  If you want to subscribe to one or both of these
mailinglists, send a message to listproc@hawaii.edu that contains one or both
of the commands

subscribe gmt-help <yourname, not email address>
subscribe gmt-group <yourname, not email address>

or register at https://listserv.hawaii.edu/.  You may post messages to
gmt-help while gmt-group is more of a one-way street for us to inform users of
bug fixes and upgrades.


Ordering the GMT package on CD/DVD-Rs
-------------------------------------

Should you or someone you know without net-access need to obtain GMT:
Geoware makes and distributes CD/DVD-Rs with the GMT package and many
useful data sets.  For more details and a full description of the data
sets (up to 60 Gb of data!) visit http://www.geoware-online.com/.


Good luck!

The GMT Team.

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