Requirements¶
Software¶
You need a Python interpreter and several add-on packages for scientific computing. Modern Linux and OS X operating systems come with Python pre-installed. However, it is recommended to freshly install the appropriate versions manually; this is particularly true for OS X, since we had bad experiences with broken Python versions shipped by Apple.
Install the following:
Note
Windows users should install the 32-bit versions of the packages listed below, even if they have a 64-bit system. This is because at the time of writing (October 01, 2010), no 32-bit binary packages of some dependencies are available for Windows.
- Python version 2.6.6 (The currently available binary package for Numpy (1.5.0) does not install with Python 2.7)
- Numpy version 1.5.0 or later
- SciPy version 0.8.0 or later
- netcdf4-python version 0.9.2 or later (netcdf4 is necessary for the netCDF output).
- Not necessary but strongly recommended is the ipython interactive shell.
- Not necessary but recommended to plot results is matplotlib.
- To visualized output in netCDF format, I recommend Panoply.
Note
A one-stop solution to set up the necessary components (and much more) for any operating system is the Enthought Python Distribution (EPD). It is provided for free under the “academic license”. In case the website does not recognize you as an academic user, look here.
Note
The download of EPD is large (>200 MB) and their website is sloow!
Note
Windows users should install the 32-bit version of EPD, even if they have a 64-bit system. This is because at the time of writing (October 01, 2010), the 64-bit EPD does not contain the module necessary for netCDF output.
Note
Users of Debian or Ubuntu may install the necessary dependencies via their package management system.
We have tested the functionality of the installation of the dependencies described above for Windows XP, for Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx”) and for Debian 6.0 (“Squeeze”). Any reports about success or failure for other operating systems is highly appreciated. Drop me an email.
Hardware¶
Any more or less modern desktop PC should do. Please let me know if you run into problems that appear to be caused by a lack of computer ressources.
