cfchecker 2.0.5ceda.p1

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README - CF Checker version 2.0.0
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To run the CF file conformance checker you must have the following
installed on your system:

- Python 2.5
- UDUNITS2
- CDMS (part of CDAT-5.x)


Notes on CDMS install
---------------------

The CDMS module is part of the CDAT distribution available from the
PCMDI software portal (http://www2-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cdat/).

You can either install the entire CDAT distribution or alternatively
use the CDAT-lite_ package.

.. _CDAT-lite: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/cdat-lite


Notes on UDUNITS-2 install
--------------------------
The UDUNITS-2 package can be obtained from the unidata website
(http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/udunits)


To run the CF checker
---------------------

Once you have both UDUNITS-2 and CDMS installed you need to complete the
following steps in order to run the CF Checker.

1. Make sure that the location of the cdms library is in your PYTHONPATH

E.g. export PYTHONPATH=/home/rsh/software/CDAT-5.2-cdms/lib/python2.5/site-packages

2. Make sure that the path to the udunits libraries are in the system
library path or alternatively set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH

E.g. export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PREFIX/lib

where $PREFIX is the --prefix option you passed to the configure script
when installing udunits.

3. Depending on the platform you are installing on, you may need to edit
the name of the udunits2 library in the cfchecks.py script. If the name
of the library is anything other than libudunits2.so then you will need to
modify, as appropriate, the line

udunits=CDLL("libudunits2.so")

4. You may also need to modify the path to the python interpreter at the top
of the cfchecks.py script.

5. Run the checker by typing:
cfchecks.py <netCDF_file.nc>

Environment Variables
---------------------

The following parameters can be set on the command-line or through environment variables:

1. UDUNITS : The path to udunits2.xml. Usually $UDUNITS_HOME/share/udunits/udunits2.xml
2. CF_STANDARD_NAMES : The path or URL to the CF standard names table
3. CF_AREA_TYPES : The path or URL to the CF area types tables


If you have any problems or comments please contact Rosalyn Hatcher
(r.s.hatcher@reading.ac.uk)