Ferret for Mac OS X

Last modified: Mon Nov 14 18:12:02 2005

Ferret

(Finally) updated for Tiger: 9 Sep 05

I provide here a compressed tape archive (.tgz) file that contains a complete ferret set-up for OS X. It is intended to be unpacked into /usr/local, where it will create a ferret subdirectory with everything that you need, including standard datasets. Fink must be installed on your system, because the executable looks for /sw/lib/libiconv.2.dylib. This is part of the libiconv package, which as near as I can tell is installed by default when fink is installed. I have verified that it works with OS X revisions from 10.2.3 up to 10.4.2. It requires a working X11 installation, which you should get from Apple (most likely via the OS X install DVD--click on "Optional Installs". Further details about X11 installation are on the main OS X web page, http://tazman.princeton.edu/osx/index.html. Please verify that X11 is running before trying to use ferret for making graphics. If you type xterm at a terminal prompt and don't get an xterm window, this qualifies as "X11 not working."

The tgz file is 27M; uncompressed it requires about 85M. To install, download ferret.tgz to your Desktop using a right- or control-click. Alternatively, if you have installed wget from fink, you could do:

cd ~/Desktop
wget http://tazman.princeton.edu/osx/ferret.tgz

The installation instructions that follow assume that the ferret.tgz file is on your desktop (i.e. resides in ~/Desktop). Also, you may want to sudo bash instead of sudo tcsh below; it shouldn't matter. In the unlikely event that /usr/local does not exist, please make it, and give "other" read and execute permissions ("sudo tcsh;mkdir /usr/local;chmod go+rx /usr/local"):

sudo tcsh
cd /usr/local
tar zxvf ~/Desktop/ferret.tgz

Hey, that's about it! Put a line like source /usr/local/ferret/bin/ferret_paths in your .cshrc (if you use tcsh), or grab my .cshrc file at http://tazman.princeton.edu/osx/dot-cshrc). If you use bash, you'll need to (a) fix the ferret_paths file and (b) do the equivalent of the "source" command above. Don't ask me, I don't use bash. For (a), note that there is a /usr/local/ferret/bin/ferret_paths_bash_template from which you can work.

Remarks about this ferret version

Note the following and please tell me if you have evidence that any of what follows is erroneous:

Most of the libraries needed by this executable are statically-linked (compiled-in), however, it does require a basic fink installation to work.
I have commented out the "appending ferret path", etc. messages, in the ferret_paths file since many programs assume that the shell will start up with no text output (e.g., LAM MPI)
The files in the tgz archive are all owned by userid = 501 with groupid = 501. By default, this should be the first user added to the OS X machine, and I expect it to just plain work for 95% of users. If 501 is not you (type "id" at the prompt to find out), or you want to change the ownership/groupership, try something like: "find /usr/local/ferret -user 501 -exec chown myUser:myGroup {} \;", where myUser and myGroup should be the real user and group that you want. Of course, this needs to be done as root (generally via sudo).
This version is allegedly DODS/OpenNDAP enabled, but external functions do not work.

These executables were compiled by Kevin O'Brien at NOAA/PMEL. I put together the environment from files PMEL has made available. I would very much appreciate bug reports at andyj@splash.princeton.edu. If you're interested in getting real support for Ferret on OS X, perhaps a polite email to the developers at oar.pmel.contact_ferret@noaa.gov would be in order, just so they can have an idea of how many Ferret-OS X users there really are.

Handy tip

If you use "gv" to view postscript output from ferret, you may have noticed that the display must generally be set to "seascape". I also find that turning off the antialias feature speeds the display up dramatically. "gv" can do this automatically using command-line switches. I use the following alias in my .cshrc file:

alias gvas 'gv --orientation=seascape --noantialias'

My .cshrc file is available for download at http://tazman.princeton.edu/osx/dot-cshrc.

Back to OS X for Oceanographers and Atmospheric Scientists

Andy Jacobson webmaster@tazman.princeton.edu