Spherekit: Availability and Supported Platforms

Overview

Welcome to Spherekit's ftp site.

The Spherekit distribution comes in two different formats:

  1. binary versions which we have compiled and tested on several platforms
  2. a full source code version you can compile yourself.

The first option is strongly recommended.

Spherekit makes use of several other software packages: GMT3.0, TclTk, ghostview, and netCDF.
Both Spherekit distributions - the source and binary - include these software tools.

The binary version of the Spherekit executables takes up 20 megs. We have also incorporated a netCDF version of the NGDC 5 minute global D.E.M., which takes up an additional 37 megs. Downloading this file is optional. Spherekit can use this file to find the elevations associated with a set of locations, which is convenient, especially if you plan on doing topographically assisted interpolation.

Binary Distributions

The binary installation process has four steps:

  1. Download and uncompress the files (below) for your system.
  2. run ./make_sk in the Spherekit directory
  3. run ./test_sk to ensure the accuracy of Spherekit's interpolations
  4. add the SK directory to your path statement

The following files are avalailable:



DEM Distribution

Installing this file is simple. Follow these directions:

  1. Install Spherekit (as described above)
  2. Download and uncompress the DEM file
  3. cd to the Spherekit directory and run set_sk_demdir
    (See the README file for directions).

That's it. This process will enable the Spherekit Load->DEM feature.

Source Distribution

With the source distribution you can compile Spherekit from the ground up. We have provided binary distributions for all the platforms available to us (decAlphas and SGI), but we can't make guaratees about Spherekit's performance on systems we haven't tested. As a convenenience for you, we have also included the source files for netCDF, Tcl/Tk, a subset of GMT3.0, and ghostview1.5.

Since Spherekit has been tested with these modules (on decAlphas and SGI), it is strongly suggested that you use the source files provided in this distribution. We have gone to a lot of work to bring these components together into one application framework. Please take advantage of this labor. Spherekit will probably not be kept forward compatible with later versions of these packages.

You will need to make these programs and libraries in addition to Spherekit.

The compilation process for the source distribution is comprised of these major steps:

  1. Download and uncompress the source distribution file
  2. cd to SKv1/netcdf-3.3/, read the README file there, and make the netCDF library
  3. cd to SKv1/GMT3.0, read the README file there, and make the GMT3.0 executables
  4. cd to SKv1/TclTk, read the README file there, and make Tcl and then Tk
  5. cd to SKv1/ghostview1.5, read the README file there, and make ghostview
  6. cd to SKv1, read the README file there, and make Spherekit
  7. run ./test_sk to test the interpolators
  8. add the SK directory to your path statement

Porting Spherekit to a new platform is a fairly involved task, requiring ANSII C and FORTRAN 77 compilers. If you port Spherekit, please let other users benefit from your efforts by contacting a member of the Spherekit team and making the binaries available to us. We will add your binaries to those listed above, and credit your work.


Thanks!


NCGIA © 1997