Installing a WMT executor

A WMT executor, part of the CSDMS Web Modeling Tool, runs standalone or coupled model components on a computational resource.

Requirements:

• An internet-accessible MacOSX or Linux computational resource
• git

Start by selecting an install directory for the WMT executor on the computational resource. The installation directory needs to be accessible to all users. For example, on the CSDMS HPCC, beach, WMT executors are installed in /home/csdms/wmt.

Change to the install directory you've selected and define a shell variable for future use.

cd /home/csdms/wmt
mkdir _testing && cd _testing
install=$(pwd)

Install a local Python distribution for use by the executor. CSDMS IF recommends miniconda, a minimal distribution based on the Anaconda Python distribution.

curl http://repo.continuum.io/miniconda/Miniconda-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh -o miniconda.sh
bash ./miniconda.sh -f -b -p $install/conda
export PATH=$install/conda/bin:$PATH

Replace "Linux" with "MacOSX" in the curl statement above if installing on a Mac.

Use the Anaconda package manager, conda, to install a set of packages used by the executor.

conda install ipython numpy scipy netcdf4

(Although ipython isn't required, it's handy for debugging.)

Using conda and the CSDMS Anaconda channel, install cca-bocca, which should fetch and install several dependencies for the CSDMS toolchain, including cca-spec-babel, ccaffeine, and cca-bocca.

conda install -c csdms cca-bocca

Clone and install the Python Modeling Tools, PyMT, using the changes from the mcflugen/fix-for-new-bmi branch. (The latest changes aren't yet in the CSDMS dev channel.)

mkdir opt && cd opt
git clone https://github.com/csdms/pymt
cd pymt
git branch mcflugen/fix-for-new-bmi
git checkout mcflugen/fix-for-new-bmi
git pull origin mcflugen/fix-for-new-bmi
python setup.py develop

To aid debugging, we recommend installing with "develop" for this and all Python packages built from source.

PyMT needs cfunits to run.

conda install -c csdms cfunits-python

Clone and install bmi-babel. (The latest changes aren't yet in the dev channel.)

cd $install/opt
git clone https://github.com/bmi-forum/bmi-babel
cd bmi-babel
python setup.py develop

The CSDMS scripting package is a new requirement for bmi-babel.

conda install -c csdms/channel/dev scripting

Finally, clone and install wmt-exe.

cd $install/opt
git clone https://github.com/csdms/wmt-exe
cd wmt-exe
python setup.py develop

Check the installation by calling wmt-info:

wmt-info

which returns:

[beach.colorado.edu]
host_nickname = beach
ssh_port = 22
host = beach.colorado.edu
directory = /home/csdms/wmt/_testing/conda

on the executor I've set up.

CSDMS model components can now be installed into this WMT executor. (TODO: Link to article.)

--Mpiper (talk) 10:53, 23 September 2016 (MDT)