Install GMT

Preamble

GMT installation is explained in detail in the GMT Homepge. I recommend the following to windows users.

While it is perfectly possible to run Cygwin using the dos shell, it is much less painfull to first install Cygwin -- a free, open-source, UNIX-like shell environment for Windows and then use that environment to get going as if you are on a UNIX computer.

Assuming that you either are on a UNIX computer or have Cygwin installed on Windows with all the basic stuff like compilers (gcc, g77), utilities (awk, sed), etc., do the following to install GMT.

Installation

• Check whether you can acces ftp sites. If you are behind a firwall, there may be problems. Then the following method will NOT work.
• Access the install form on GMT homepage. (Last time I checked, it was here.
• There is a link on the form to download the script called install_gmt. Download and save it now.
• Fill in the form. Keep the following in mind.

  NetCDF Setup

  • Select "Please get and install netCDF ..." option
  • Give /usr/local/netCDF/ as the path

  High and Full resolutions coastline data

  • Click to get them unless your network is very very slow (Default is not to get).

  Select the C compiler you want to use

  • gcc

  Select default GMTHOME directory

  • /usr/local/GMT

  Select supplemental packages to install

  Unclick this unless you have Matlab: *MEX: Matlab interface for reading/writing GMT grdfiles

• Submit the form and save the result as gmt_install.txt
• Go to the place where you have install_gmt script and the above file. Do the following

  sh install_gmt gmt_install

• If everything is successful, the script will suggest some environment settings just before exiting. I use bash shell (as opposed to csh shell). It is also the default shell in Cygwin or Linux. In case of bash, set them in eigher .bashrc file in your home directory (affects only you) or at /etc/bashrc file (better). My settings are like this:

#GMT settings export NETCDFHOME=/usr/local/NetCDF export GMTHOME=/usr/local/GMT/GMT4.1.1 export PATH=/usr/local/GMT/GMT4.1.1/bin:$PATH export MANPATH=$MANPATH:/usr/local/GMT/GMT4.1.1/man to MANPATH #GMT settings end

• csh settings are different.

Testing

Remember to exit the shell and open a new one (for the settings above to take effect). Then the command

printenv |grep GMT

should output lines containing

MANPATH= ...
GMTHOME= ...
PATH= ...

(dots ... were added by me!)

Then run an extremely simple GMT operation as follows:

minmax << EOF
> 5 10 15
> -1 -25 35
> 100 0 1
> EOF

This should produce the following output.

 
<stdin>: N = 3  <-1/100>        <-25/10>        <1/35>

Then you may like to attempt some simple plotting script.