From 0f2b60de5e87a379f9d6bb680500ce816c8fbd1f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "W. Trevor King" <wking@drexel.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:39:19 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] Add netCDF post.

---
 posts/netCDF.mdwn | 91 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 91 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 posts/netCDF.mdwn

diff --git a/posts/netCDF.mdwn b/posts/netCDF.mdwn
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+[NetCDF][] (Network Common Data Form) is an open standard for
+self-describing, machine-independent data formats for array-oriented
+scientific data.  The standard and a good deal of associated software
+are developed by the [Unidata][] program at the [University
+Corporation for Atmospheric Research][UCAR] (UCAR).
+
+I needed one of their libraries ([ucar.ma2][]) to build [[HDFView]]
+from source.  Because I have very little [[Java]] experience, figuring
+out how to do this took the better part of today.  Here are my notes,
+so things will be faster the next time around…
+
+Note that the `hdf-java` source (containing the HDFView source) comes
+with a few precompiled JARs, including `netcdf.jar`.  However, Gentoo
+[wants to compile everything from source][why-source]), so we remove
+those JARs before compiling `hdf-java`, forcing a reliance on versions
+that have already been installed from source using [Portage][].
+
+Java develoment kit
+-------------------
+
+You'll need both a Java development kit (JDK, think "compiler") and
+runtime environment (JRE, think "bytecode interpreter").  Install the
+default implementations with
+
+    # emerge virtual/jdk
+
+The [Gentoo Java team][team] publishes a [Java guide][guide] with more
+details if you're interested.
+
+Maven
+-----
+
+You'll also need [Maven][], [Apache]'s Java pacakge manager.
+
+    # emerge dev-java/maven-bin
+
+There's a from-source [dev-java/maven] in [java-overlay][], but I'll
+wait until that has been merged into the main Portage tree before
+checking it out.  NetCDF will probabaly not depend on any
+bleeding-edge Maven features.
+
+NetCDF
+------
+
+NetCDF is currently versioned with [[Git]] ([hosted on
+GitHub][github]), so you can grab the source with
+
+    $ git clone git://github.com/Unidata/thredds.git
+
+Unfortunately, this repository bundles a number of related Unidata
+packages besides netCDF, so the 95 megabyte cdm directory comes with
+an additional 432 megabytes of additional stuff.  This means that it's
+a good idea to run the clone over a fast connection, and probably
+useful to use `git clone --depth 10` or similar to limit the amount of
+history you clone.
+
+Now that you've got the source, just tell Maven to install it for you.
+First, you'll need to install the `common utilities:
+
+    $ cd thredds/common
+    $ mvn-2.2 install
+
+Next, install the `cdm` module itself
+
+    $ cd thredds
+    $ mvn-2.2 install
+
+For more details, see the [netCDF documentation][docs] and [build
+instructions][build].
+
+Compiling HDFView
+-----------------
+
+To install HDFView on Gentoo, just emerge `dev-java/hdf-java` from my
+[[wtk overlay|Gentoo overlay]] with the `hdfview` `USE` flag enabled.
+
+[NetCDF]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/
+[Unidata]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/about/
+[UCAR]: http://www2.ucar.edu/
+[ucar.ma2]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf-java/v4.0/javadoc/ucar/ma2/package-summary.html
+[why-source]: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/java/why-build-from-source.xml
+[Portage]: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/portage/
+[team]: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/java/
+[guide]: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/java.xml
+[Maven]: http://maven.apache.org/
+[Apache]: http://apache.org/
+[dev-java/maven]: http://gpo.zugaina.org/dev-java/maven
+[java-overlay]: http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/java/wiki/Overlays
+[github]: https://github.com/Unidata/thredds/
+[docs]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf-java/documentation.htm
+[build]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf-java/tutorial/buildFromSource.html
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