EFs and upgrading to Version 5

[Emilio Mayorga <emiliom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I want to thank Steve and the Ferret group (Jonathan, Kevin, Ansley) for
their help with a problem regarding External Functions and upgrading to
V5. These comments may be of help to those who plan to upgrade from an
earlier version and have never used External Functions.

The normal upgrade procedure installs ALL the EF functionalities; the EF
configuration instructions in the Ferret EF pages (and also in the User
Manual) are actually outdated and misleading, because they say that you
have to download certain files manually. There is one problem, though. Two
new environment variables have been defined:
   setenv FER_WEB_BROWSER "netscape -ncols 60"
   setenv FER_EXTERNAL_FUNCTIONS "$FER_DIR/ext_func/libs"

The second one is very important, as the EFs will not work if that
variable has not been defined. ferret_paths is not changed during an
upgrade, so you will have to change it manually. A good way of doing this
is to open up the file ferret_paths_template that is found under 
$FER_DIR/bin, and copy the appropriate lines from there.

This problem is not encountered if you install Ferret for the first time,
because in that case you are instructed to copy ferret_paths_template to
your desired location anyways.

I hope this will prevent some mild headaches until Steve et al update the
Upgrade instructions.

Emilio Mayorga

________________________________________________________________
University of Washington	
School of Oceanography			emiliom@u.washington.edu
Box 357940				ph. (206) 543-5334
Seattle, WA  98195-7940	  USA		FAX (206) 685-3351
http://boto.ocean.washington.edu/staff_pages/emilio