Mac

This guide is intended to provide installation instructions on macOS for Apple branded desktops and laptops. It begins with a list of dependencies required with instructions for installing RST. This process was designed for OS Sierra and above, but should still work on any machine which can run XCode. If you encounter any problems with installing RST, please create an issue describing your problem and the error message you receive. The community will then help you solve the problem and add it into our troubleshooting section to help other users.

Table of Contents:

  1. Library Requirements
    1. Macports
    2. Homebrew
    3. CDF
  2. Installation
  3. Troubleshooting

Library Requirements

Warning! sudo privileges needed to install the various libraries.

If you do not have sudo privileges please contact the system administrator of your system to install the follow libraries for your distribution.

We will be installing the dependencies using a Mac compatible package manager, such as Macports or Homebrew. Make sure you have one of those installed.

Note that the names of the following dependencies have been known to change slightly depending on the date and the particular package manager used. A quick google search can often tell you the new name if it has changed - just replace the name in the install commands if it has changed.

Macports install guide

Homebrew install guide

You also need the CDF library, see below.

Dependencies
libhdf5
libncurses
libpng16
libx11
netpbm
netcdf

Installation line:

Macports

sudo port install libhdf5 libnetcdf libcurses libpng16 libx11 netpbm (10.77.03_2+x11)

Homebrew

sudo brew install hdf5 netcdf ncurses libpng netpbm

For X11, make sure you have XCode installed from the macOS App store

Now install the CDF

CDF

Note

Make sure you successfully installed the ncurses library for your distribution first.

You can find the latest release at: http://cdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/ For macOS it is also available through MacPorts, as are all listed dependencies. However, if the MacPorts installation errors or you do not use MacPorts, you may follow the instructions below.

From the above site, navigate to the macosx directory and download the pre-compiled binary file cdf[XX_X]-setup_universal_binary.tar.gz, where XX_X is the version number of the latest release.

Unpack the binary using the following steps:

  1. tar -xzvf cdf[XX_X]-setup_universal_binary.tar.gz
  2. double-click on the unpacked binary to be led through installation instructions.

Alternatively, you may follow the instructions given on the linux page, replacing:

make OS=linux ENV=gnu all with make OS=macosx ENV=gnu all.

You can now delete the cdfXX_X-dist directory or binary and the tar.gz archive.

Now go to the Installation

TroubleShooting:

If you find any problems/solutions, please create a github issue so the community can help you or add it to the documentation

Problem

Error: curses.h not found

Solution

  • (Recommended) To make a symlink from lncurses library to lcurses, run the following commands in the terminal:

    ln -s /usr/lib64/libncurses.so /usr/lib64/libcurses.so
ln -s /usr/lib64/libncurses.a /usr/lib64/libcurses.a

  • To modify the Makefile change the following:
    CURSESLIB_linux_gnu=-lcurses to CURSESLIB_linux_gnu=-lncurses
    CURSESLIB_linux_gnu32=-lcurses to CURSESLIB_linux_gnu32=-lncurses
    CURSESLIB_linux_gnu64=-lcurses to CURSESLIB_linux_gnu64=-lncurses

Installation

  1. Obtaining RST software:

    • Download the official release with a citable DOI from Zenodo (recommended for most users)
    • Download the official release from Github
    • Clone from Github (for developers): git clone https://github.com/superdarn/rst/

  2. Check RST environment variables: Open rst/.profile.bash using your preferred text editor: OSTYPE="darwin" SYSTEM="darwin"

Open rst/.profile/base.bash to check paths are correctly set:

XPATH, NETCDF_PATH, CDF_PATH To check if the paths are set correctly locate the following header files: For NETCDF_PATH locate netcdf.h For CDF_PATH locate cdf.h

  • If you have IDL, check to see that IDL_IPATH in rst/.profile/idl.bash is correct. (Note: for users without IDL, modifying the IDL_IPATH environment variable is not required).

  • Load the RST environment variables. Open and edit your ~/.bashrc file to include:

    # bash profile for rst
export RSTPATH="INSTALL LOCATION"/rst
. $RSTPATH/.profile.bash

where the INSTALL LOCATION is the path with the RST repository that has been copied to your computer. In order to load the environment variables you just setup, you'll need to close your current terminal and open a new terminal, or from the command line type:

   source ~/.bashrc

  1. Run make.build from the command line. You may need to change directory to $RSTPATH/build/script. This runs a helper script that sets up other compiling code.

  2. In the same directory run make.code to compile all of the code. This runs a script to find all of the source codes and compile them into binaries. A log of this compilation is stored in $RSTPATH/log.

Compiling HTML Documentation

To compile the html documentation, run make.doc from the command line. You may need to modify the URLBASE environment variable in $RSTPATH/.profile/rst.bash for the links in the html pages to function correctly. Online documentation is available at:

https://superdarn.github.io/rst/index.html

Troubleshooting

If you find any problems/solutions, please make a github issue so the community can help you or add it to the documentation

Without IDL

Error

make.code fails with the error upon the inability to locate idl_export.h.

Solution cd $RSTPATH/codebase/superdarn/src.lib/tk tar -P -czvf idl.tar.gz idl rm -rf idl cd $RSTPATH/build/script make.code

Error If the order of make.code is executed incorrectly, you will see an error upon the inability to locate a header file (i.e. sza.h). If this happens (using sza.h as an example):

Solution

find $RSTPATH -name "sza.h"
>> $RSTPATH/codebase/imagery/src.lib/sza.1.9/include/sza.h
cd $RSTPATH/codebase/imagery/src.lib/sza.1.9/src
make clean
make
cd $RSTPATH/build/script
make.code