How to check where my GMT is installed on ubuntu?

Q&A
1

I’m trying to install GMT on my Ubuntu computer, by following this page: https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/gmt/blob/master/BUILDING.md

I copied the downloaded gmt gshhg and dcw files in to /opt/ and uncompressed them, configured the cmake files, and created the build folder at /opt/gmt-6.3.0/build/. The installation seemed to go through well.

Here is the problem. I have no idea where my GMT is installed. gmt --version will give me an error saying gmt is not installed. So what would be the path I need to add to my .bashrc? Is there a command that will enable me to find the path?

Many thanks.

2

I guess ‘which gmt’ doesnt work either then.

Try:
find -type f -name «gmt»

3

The installation directory is set by CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX in cmake/ConfigUser.cmake. According to the template, it usually defaults to usr/local but I always set this rather than relying on the defaults (see https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/gmt/blob/master/BUILDING.md#configuring)

4

Thanks!

I returns nothing in my current directory, so I went all the way to the root directory but got the below error:

find -type f -name «gmt»
find: ‘./run/user/1000/gvfs’: Permission denied
5

Thank you.

Here is my ConfigUser setting:
set (CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX “/opt/gmt-6.3.0”)

Unfortunately, this below command returned nothing:
$/opt/gmt-6.3.0/gmt --version
bash: /opt/gmt-6.3.0/gmt: No such file or directory

6

Well, presumably it is /opt/gmt-6.3.0/bin/gmt then. Look around in the build dir.

7

Many thanks, Paul.

I’m able to find the info from a install_manifest.txt file. It turns out to be the below. Note the double quotation :slight_smile:
/opt/gmt-6.3.0/build/“/opt/gmt-6.3.0”/bin/

I thought that cmake link was supposed to be the link to the gmt installation file, without realizing it should be the destination file.

8

I would delete the build dir and rebuild after removing those quotes from the ConfigUser file.

9

OK. Thanks. I plan to start over the process.

BTW, where is the best location for the "build" folder, considering that my desired destination location for gmt is /usr/local/ (default) and my downloaded and uncompressed sourced files for gmt, gshhg, and dcw are all located at /opt/?

The instruction says this:
“To keep generated files separate from source files in the source tree, you should create a build directory in the top-level directory.”

I tried to create the “build” directory under /opt/, but got the below error:
CMake Error: The source directory "/opt" does not appear to contain CMakeLists.txt.

Does that mean I would have to create the “build” file at /opt/gmt-6.3.0?

10

If you want to install the GMT binaries and libraries in /opt/gmt-6.3.0/lib,include,bin.share etc then I would use /opt/gmt-6.3.0 as the prefix in the configure but where you do the configuration and build can be anywhere - it can be deleted when you are done anyway. SO I would do that in my home dir. I dont think you want the build dir and the prefix install dir to be the same.

11

Got you! Many thanks, Paul! Happy holidays.

12

Sorry leon6j for my bad example of find and wrong quotation marks.

$ find [dir] -type f -name "gmt"

I have a gmt folder in my home directory where I put all gmt-related stuff. I install to the standard destination (/usr/local/bin/).

$ ls -l
total 16
drwxr-xr-x  9 anbj anbj 4096 Dec 23 10:58 b      <-- build directory
drwxr-xr-x 11 anbj anbj 4096 Nov 24 20:03 gmt    <-- gmt repo (from git clone)
drwxr-xr-x  4 anbj anbj 4096 Oct 23 20:28 share  <-- gshhs and dcw

If you want to compile from source always, consider making an alias in your .bashrc;

gmtbuild() {
	cd ~/gmt/gmt
	git pull
	cd ~/gmt/b
	time (cmake ~/gmt/gmt -DCOPY_GSHHG=TRUE -DCOPY_DCW=TRUE -DGSHHG_ROOT=~/gmt/share/coast -DDCW_ROOT=~/gmt/share/dcw -DGMT_ENABLE_OPENMP=ON \
	&& cmake --build . --parallel $(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN) \
	&& sudo cmake --build . --target install
	}

Then you’ll get bleeding edge gmt with a single command.

13

Many thanks, Andreas!