Additional options for installing Clawpack

See also:

tar file

You can download the most recent (or certain previous versions) of Clawpack as a tar file. After untarring this, you can set environment variables to point to this version.

Download a tar file from one of these sources:

After downloading a tar file you can do, e.g.

tar -xzf clawpack-v5.8.0.tar.gz
cd clawpack-v5.8.0
export CLAW=/full/path/to/clawpack-v5.8.0  # in bash

The last command sets an environment variable if you are using the bash shell. The syntax may be different in other shells. Replace /full/path/to with the appropriate full path.

You must also add $CLAW to your PYTHONPATH environment variable, see Python path.

Alternatively, rather than setting PYTHONPATH you can use pip to install this version. See :ref:`pip_version

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or

  • Use pip to install this version of Clawpack:

    cd $CLAW
pip install --user -e .   # note trailing dot indicating "this directory"

This is preferable to many users than using the environment variable PYTHONPATH, but will also attempt to compile the Riemann solvers

git clone

You can clone the git repositories from https://github.com/clawpack. This is particularly useful if you want the latest development version or a branch that is not in a release yet, and/or if you plan to contribute to the code yourself via a pull request. See Developers’ Guide for more details, but the basic commands are:

git clone git://github.com/clawpack/clawpack.git
cd clawpack
git submodule init      # for repositories pyclaw, clawutil, visclaw, etc.
git submodule update    # clones all the submodule repositories
pip install --user -e . # note trailing dot indicating "this directory"
export CLAW=/full/path/to/clawpack

Docker

Instead of installing Clawpack and all its dependencies, another alternative is Docker for Clawpack. The Docker image already contains not only Clawpack but also all the Installation Prerequisites.

Installing PyClaw for parallel processing with PETSc

First, install Clawpack. Then see the install instructions for Running in parallel.

Alternatively, you may use the following shell scripts (assembled by Damian San Roman) to install everything:

Next steps:

Once Clawpack is installed, you can go to one of the following pages to get started:

Old stuff

pip install

The recommended approach is to use pip install. It is also possible to have multiple versions of Clawpack installed and switch between them (i.e., modify your Python path) using pip. (see pip install instructions) If you plan to do this, or if you also wish to directly use the Fortran variants of Clawpack (classic, AMRClaw, and/or GeoClaw), then we recommend using the following version of the pip install command (you might want to first read the notes below to see if you want to change anything in this command):

pip install --src=$HOME/clawpack_src --user -e \
    git+https://github.com/clawpack/clawpack.git@v5.8.0#egg=clawpack-v5.8.0 \
    --use-deprecated=legacy-resolver

This will download Clawpack (via a git clone) into the directory $HOME/clawpack_src/clawpack-v5.8.0. The top installation directory can be changed by modifying the --src target (or omit this part to put it in your current working directory). If you have already downloaded Clawpack via a different mechanism then see Using pip to install a different version rather than using the above command.

See Clawpack components for a list of what’s included in this top level directory.

Note: Using pip to install will also check some python Installation Prerequisites and may update these on your system, and will use f2py to convert Fortran Riemann solvers to Python versions. (This is really only needed if you plan to use PyClaw.) See Other Installation Options if you want more control.

The --user flag is necessary if you are installing on a shared computer where you do not have root access. If you do have root access and want it to be available to all users, you can omit this flag.

The -e flag makes it an “editable” install, leaving the source code in place and allowing you to modify it if desired. (Otherwise, by default, pip would move the python code to some site-packages directory and delete everything else.)

In order to use the Fortran codes within Clawpack, you should then set the environment variable CLAW to point to the clawpack-v5.8.0 directory within the installation directory $HOME/clawpack_src, and FC to point to the desired Fortran compiler, e.g. in the bash shell:

export CLAW=$HOME/clawpack_src/clawpack-v5.8.0
export FC=gfortran

See Set environment variables for more information.

For more discussion of pip installation, and troubleshooting hints, see pip install instructions.

Other Installation Options

In general, installing Clawpack requires downloading some version and then setting paths so that Python import statements (and possibly Fortran Makefiles) find the desired version. Switching between versions already on your computer simply requires resetting paths. For hints and troubleshooting, see:

Note that if you wish to use the Python version of PDE solvers in PyClaw, these require precompiling the Fortran Riemann solvers using f2py to create Python versions. This is also done by pip install, along with setting paths. Switching versions by resetting paths does not require recompiling these solvers.

If you are only using the Fortran solvers (when using Classic, AMRClaw, and GeoClaw) then Python versions of the Riemann solvers are not required. In this case, any problems that arise from the use of f2py can be avoided by simply setting paths in a different manner.

Rather than using pip, there are several other options for using Clawpack that may be useful depending on your needs. These are summarized in Additional options for installing Clawpack, including:

Python path: If you download a tarfile or use git clone to download a version, you can still use pip install to set the Python path appropriately. See pip install instructions for details.

If you are not using pip to set paths, then you will need to set the PYTHONPATH environment variable to point to a particular version of Clawpack, but this is not recommended. See Python path for more details and tips on sorting out your path.