Prerequisites
The OpenIFS package will run on a variety of Unix based systems: Linux flavours, MacOS X and AIX. There is no support for running OpenIFS under Windows.
OpenIFS requires the following to be available in order to build and run:
bash - the scripts accompanying the package make use of the Bash shell. This is usually available on Unix systems.
perl - Perl is used by OpenIFS scripts and the FCM software (see below).
mpi library - an implementation of MPI must be available on your system. It can either be vendor supplied or one of the freely available versions such as MPICH or OpenMPI. Note that if OpenMP is enabled, the implementation of MPI must be thread-safe.
fortran95 & C compilers - many Unix systems come with gfortran/gcc by default which work well with OpenIFS. High Performance Computer facilities may provide other compilers which achieve better performance. OpenIFS supports: GNU compilers, Intel compilers, AIX compilers and Cray compilers. The fortran compiler must support an auto-double (e.g. -r8) capability as some source code files are in fixed format fortran.
OpenMP - the OpenIFS model can make use of OpenMP if it is supported on your system (multicore) and compilers but this is optional. Note that if OpenMP is used then the version of MPI used should be thread-safe.
lapack & blas libraries - these are usually available on all flavours of Linux/Unix. Some systems, notably HPC installations will have special optimized versions of these libraries. These should be used instead (if a version exists for your choice of compiler) to achieve a better performance. You may need to modify the compile configuration to access these optimized libraries.
In addition two other packages that accompany the OpenIFS model need to be installed prior to the compilation of the OpenIFS code.
FCM - used to build and compile the model. FCM is available from the OpenIFS ftp download site. FCM is developed by the UK Meteorological Office. For more informatoin, please visit: FCM home page.
grib-api - this is available from the OpenIFS ftp download site. Although this is also available from the ECMWF software download page, it's recommended the one provided on the ftp site is used as it will have been tested and known to work with OpenIFS.