Installation Prerequisites

Installing and using Clawpack requires the following:

Operating system

  • Linux

  • Mac OS X (you need to have the Xcode developer tools installed in order to have “make” working)

Fortran

See Fortran Compilers for more about which compilers work well with Clawpack.

Note that Fortran is required even if you only plan to use the “pure Python” finite volume methods in PyClaw, since the Riemann solvers are mostly written in Fortran and compiled for use in PyClaw using f2py.

Python

  • Python Version 2.7 or above, or (new in 5.4.0) Python 3

  • NumPy (for PyClaw/VisClaw)

  • matplotlib (for PyClaw/VisClaw)

The Anaconda Python Distribution is an easy way to get all of these. See Python Hints for more information on installing the required modules and to get started using Python if you are not familiar with it.

pip

If you are installing via pip install then you need pip. You may already have it; in particular the Anaconda Python distribution contains pip. If you need to install it, see https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/

The version of pip install suggested for Quick Installation of all packages requires a recent version of pip, so you may need to upgrade if you run into problems.

Git

If you are installing via pip using the command in Quick Installation of all packages, or via git clone, then you need Git. You may already have it; in particular the Xcode tools on Mac OSX contains Git. If you need to install it, see the Git book.