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Re: netCDF, GMT and Mac OS X
- Subject: Re: netCDF, GMT and Mac OS X
- Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 20:36:00 -0600
Hi Paul,
> As you know, GMT is using netCDF for grids, and many GMT users are
> now 'switching' back to Macs because of OSX. I understand that your
> group does not have access to Mac OSX for testing. However, I think
> it would be ideal if some testing could take place on OSX before
> releases. Remko Scharro, on the GMT developer team and cc'ed in this
> message, has spent some time looking into this problem and should
> soon send you some info that might improve the installability of
> netCDF on Mac OSX (32 and 64 bit versions). Allthough I hope your
> group would be able to acquire a Mac for testing (a plain Mac mini
> goes for < $500 and would let you test 32-bit G4 chips; an iMac G5
> (64-bit) can be had for < $1,200), in the mean time I would be happy
> to grant you ssh login privileges on my G5 for testing netCDF. Since
> I am in Sydney this year it would work well with the time-zone shifts.
We have had a Mac OSX platform for testing for some time (though not a
G5), and even distribute the current release in the form of a
precompiled ".pkg" file that installs when you double-click it:
ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/binary/darwin_7.8-power_macintosh/netcdf-3.6.0-p1.pkg.zip
I can see why you might conclude we have no support for Mac OSX,
since it's not actually mentioned anywhere on our "NetCDF Installation
and Porting Guide" page at
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packges/netcdf/docs/netcdf-install/
but it is listed as a supported platform in our "NetCDF Binaries" page
at
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/binaries.html
and it's listed as a supported platform in answer to the FAQ "What
does netCDF run on?":
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/docs/faq.html#platforms
The machine we test and build on is my G4 PowerBook (running 10.4.2
currently). Apple doesn't supply a Fortran compiler, but I've built
successfully with g77 and Absoft, and I wrote some notes about the
latter build:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/docs/other-builds.html#absoft
I'll see if I can make our support for Mac OSX more apparent on our
web site. Incidentally. I've never owned a Windows machine and I'm
now on my second Mac OSX laptop, but I still develop on a Sun at
work. I'm a big fan of Macs ...
> I note that although setting FC=<blank> skips building the Fortran
> interface, make test still tries to test the Fortran interface and
> tries to run fort77 which fails on Mac OSX.
OK, thanks, we'll fix it if we can reproduce the problem.
I see there's another email from Remko Scharroo on this subject, so
I'll send a separate reply to that.
--Russ