[ferret_users] installing ferret on OSX, 2019 experience

[Andy Jacobson <andy.jacobson@xxxxxxxx>]

Howdy Folks,

I just succeeded in installing ferret 7.442 on a new Macbook running OS 
X 10.14.4, and I have some experiences to report.

(1) Sure I wanted to try out pyferret. My experience with this install 
was not good, however. There are confusing circular references all 
throughout the website, no possibility of precompiled binaries, and 
anaconda is astonishingly complex. It looks like a whole duplicate set 
of unix packages, like another MacPorts/Homebrew system. I eventually 
got miniconda installed, but could not convince it to download, compile, 
install, or run ferret. Happy to rm -rf that whole mess.

(2) I was able to compile from source by cloning the git repo following 
https://github.com/NOAA-PMEL/Ferret/blob/master/README_ferret_mac_homebrew.md 
and making appropriate changes to platform_specific.mk.intel-mac and and 
site_specific.mk.  Yay for the good old days. My main challenge is that 
I use MacPorts, not Homebrew, for the netCDF, readline, szip, etc. 
libraries. I could not get MacPorts to install static libraries in many 
cases (this apparently needs to be specifically added by package 
developer). Here's what I had to do:

 - copy /opt/local/bin/gfortran-mp-8 to /opt/local/bin/gfortran. Could 
not convince the Make system to use a different FC. This ought to be fixed.

 - needed to install not just the MacPorts netcdf package, but also 
netcdf-fortran.

 - all LIBDIR variables in site_specific.mk are set to /opt/local/lib

 - the references to .a static libraries in 
platform_specific.mk.intel-mac had to be changed to .dylib:

else ifeq ($(strip $(SZ_LIBDIR)),)
#       CDFLIB          = $(NETCDF_LIBDIR)/libnetcdff.a \
#                         $(NETCDF_LIBDIR)/libnetcdf.a \
#                         $(HDF5_LIBDIR)/libhdf5_hl.a \
#                         $(HDF5_LIBDIR)/libhdf5.a
        CDFLIB          = $(NETCDF_LIBDIR)/libnetcdff.dylib \
                          $(NETCDF_LIBDIR)/libnetcdf.dylib \
                          $(HDF5_LIBDIR)/libhdf5_hl.dylib \
                          $(HDF5_LIBDIR)/libhdf5.dylib
else
#       CDFLIB          = $(NETCDF_LIBDIR)/libnetcdff.a \
#                         $(NETCDF_LIBDIR)/libnetcdf.a \
#                         $(HDF5_LIBDIR)/libhdf5_hl.a \
#                         $(HDF5_LIBDIR)/libhdf5.a \
#                         $(SZ_LIBDIR)/libsz.a
        CDFLIB          = $(NETCDF_LIBDIR)/libnetcdff.dylib \
                          $(NETCDF_LIBDIR)/libnetcdf.dylib \
                          $(HDF5_LIBDIR)/libhdf5_hl.dylib \
                          $(HDF5_LIBDIR)/libhdf5.dylib \
                          $(SZ_LIBDIR)/libsz.dylib


Sorry if this is a knock on pyferret, but my summary is that the install 
system is not ready for prime time.

--
Andy Jacobson
andy.jacobson@xxxxxxxx

NOAA Earth System Research Lab
Global Monitoring Division
325 Broadway R/GMD1
Boulder, Colorado 80305

303/497-4916