Compiling DART

To build DART executables you will need to

Create an mkmf.template with appropriate compiler and library flags.
Choose which model you want to use with DART, and cd into that work directory. For example, if you want to build DART for the lorenz_63 model, cd DART/models/lorenz_63/work
Build the DART executables with ./quickbuild.sh

For more detail on how quickbuild.sh works see DART build system.

Customizing the mkmf.template file

mkmf.templates for different compilers/architectures can be found in the DART/build_templates directory and have names with extensions that identify the compiler, the architecture, or both. This is how you inform the build process of the specifics of your system. Our intent is that you copy one that is similar to your system into DART/build_templates/mkmf.template and customize it.

For the discussion that follows, knowledge of the contents of one of these templates (e.g. DART/build_templates/mkmf.template.intel.linux) is needed. Note that only the relevant lines of the file are shown here. The first portion of the file is a large comment block that provides valuable advice on how to customize the mkmf template file if needed.

MPIFC = mpif90
MPILD = mpif90
FC = ifort
LD = ifort
NETCDF = /usr/local
INCS = -I$(NETCDF)/include
LIBS = -L$(NETCDF)/lib -lnetcdf -lnetcdff
FFLAGS = -O2 $(INCS)
LDFLAGS = $(FFLAGS) $(LIBS)

FC	the Fortran compiler
LD	the name of the loader; typically, the same as the Fortran compiler
MPIFC	the MPI Fortran compiler; see the DART MPI introduction for more info
MPILD	the MPI loader; see the DART MPI introduction for more info
NETCDF	the location of your root netCDF installation, which is assumed to contain netcdf.mod and typesizes.mod in the include subdirectory. Note that the value of the NETCDF variable will be used by the “INCS” and “LIBS” variables.
INCS	the includes passed to the compiler during compilation. Note you may need to change this if your netCDF includes netcdf.mod and typesizes.mod are not in the standard location under the include subdirectory of NETCDF.
LIBS	the libraries passed to “FC” (or “MPIFC”) during compilation. Note you may need to change this if the netCDF libraries libnetcdf and libnetcdff are not in the standard location under the “lib” subdirectory of NETCDF.
FFLAGS	the Fortran flags passed to “FC” (or “MPIFC”) during compilation. There are often flags used for optimized code versus debugging code. See your particular compiler’s documentation for more information.
LDFLAGS	the linker flags passed to LD during compilation. See your particular linker’s documentation for more information.

Building the Lorenz_63 DART project

In order to get started with DART, here we use the Lorenz 63 model, which is a simple ODE model with only three variables. DART supports models with many orders of magnitude more variables than three, but if you can compile and run the DART code for any ONE of the models, you should be able to compile and run DART for ANY of the models. For time-dependent filtering known as cycling, where observations are iteratively assimilated at multiple time steps, DART requires the ability to move the model state forward in time. For low-order models, this may be possible with a Fortran function call, but for higher-order models, this is typically done outside of DART’s execution control. However, the assimilation itself is conducted the same way for all models. For this reason, here we focus solely on the Lorenz 63 model. If so desired, see The Lorenz 63 model: what is it and why should we care? for more information on this simple yet surprisingly relevant model. See A high-level workflow of DA in DART for further information regarding the DART workflow if you prefer to do so before building the code.

There are seven separate, stand-alone programs that are typically necessary for the end-to-end execution of a DART experiment; see below or the What is DART? section for more information on these programs and their interactions.

Note

some higher-order models have many more than seven programs; for example, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, which is run operationally around the world to predict regional weather, has 28 separate programs. Nonetheless, each of these programs are built the same way.

To build all DART programs for Lorenz_63:

cd DART/models/lorenz_63/work
./quickbuild.sh

The DART executables are built in the work directory. If the build is successful, you will see the following seven programs in your lorenz_63 work directory.

Program	Purpose
preprocess	creates custom source code for just the observations of interest
create_obs_sequence	specify a (set) of observation characteristics taken by a particular (set of) instruments
create_fixed_network_seq	specify the temporal attributes of the observation sets
perfect_model_obs	spinup and generate “true state” for synthetic observation experiments
filter	perform data assimilation analysis
obs_diag	creates observation-space diagnostic files in netCDF format to support visualization and quantification.
obs_sequence_tool	manipulates observation sequence files. This tool is not generally required (particularly for low-order models) but can be used to combine observation sequences or convert from ASCII to binary or vice-versa. Since this is a rather specialized routine, we will not cover its use further in this document.

Note

The most common problem is that the netCDF libraries and/or include files were not found in the specified location(s). The second most common problem is that the netCDF libraries were built with a different compiler than the one used for DART. Find (or compile) a compatible netCDF library, edit the DART/build_templates/mkmf.template to point to the correct locations of the includes and library files, then run ./quickbuild.sh again.