PREREQUISITES.md

Software Prerequisites

Windows-10

On Windows the precompiled libraries and Python install wheels are build using Intel Fortran 2020. Consequently, our software requires recent core system DLLs provided by Intel. Hence, you should download and install the Intel redistributable library for Fortran 2020 using default install options.

If you already have a recent Intel Fortran compiler installed, you may skip this installation. However, if you encounter some DLL loading problems, you must install the actual redistributable library.

The above instructions relate to application of the Python distribution too.

If you still encounter error messages related to loading the Python module, you have a corrupt setup of your general Python system. This could be identified by the order of loading python packages. The best solution is to reinstall your Python system in a proper way. However, a quick-fix is usually to load spectral_wave_data before any other packages because spectral_wave_data requires a more recent version of some Intel DLLs on Windows. If some other package loads an older system DLL first, you are lost. This rare issue is not present if you apply recommended procedures for setting up your Python system. Hence, consistently using e.g. pyenv or Anaconda environments. In general, manual fumbling of system paths is always a source of subtle problems and should be avoided.

Linux

There are many different Linux distributions using different incompatible versions of system libraries. Without using very old versions of gcc/gfortran it is not possible to provide binaries working on all Linux distributions.

Since spectral_wave_data requires features from version 9.x or newer of the Gnu Compiler Collection (gcc), it is not possible to create a unified binary. This is why you don't find a Linux version of spectral_wave_data on PyPI.

The uploaded Linux binaries and Python wheels are compiled and tested using gfortran/gcc 9.x on the Ubuntu x86_64 architecture. It is therefore expected to work on related distroes.

These binaries have also briefly been tested on CentOS-8 with no errors in the pytest package. Consequently, they are also expected to work on RedHat and Fedora related distros.

If you on above systems encounter problems of loading some system libraries, you need to install the Gnu Compiler Collection (gcc), including gfortran, version 9.x or newer on your system.

If you have another Linux distro you may still try the precompiled libraries. If they don't work, it is not difficult to compile from source:

• Install and apply gcc/g++/gfortran version 9.x or newer
• Run the Cmake scripts included in this repository.
• For Python, finally run the included bash scripts to compile a wheel install file for your specific system.