Madagascar Software Package

Madagascar is an open-source software package for multidimensional data analysis and reproducible computational experiments. Its mission is to provide

a convenient and powerful environment
a convenient technology transfer tool

for researchers working with digital image and data processing in geophysics and related fields. Technology developed using the Madagascar project management system is transferred in the form of recorded processing histories, which become "computational recipes" to be verified, exchanged, and modified by users of the system.

The mission of the Madagascar project is to provide a shared research environment for computational data analysis in geophysics and related fields.

The Madagascar environment consists of:

Standalone programs for out-of-core data analysis;
Standalone programs for geophysical data processing and imaging;
A development kit for C, C++, Java, Fortran-77, Fortran-90, Python, Matlab, and Octave;
A framework for reproducible numerical experiments, based on SCons;
A framework for scientific publications, based on Scons and LaTeX;
A collection of reproducible scientific articles also used as usage examples and regression tests for the standalone programs;
A collection of datasets used as input to reproducible numerical experiments.

Useful Madagascar links:

Madagascar School on Reproducible Computational Geophysics and Hands-On Workshop

Sponsored by PTTC Texas/SE New Mexico Region

License

The Madagascar package is released in an open-source form under the standard GNU GPL license. In simple words, there are no restrictions on the use of the software (including copying, modifying, selling, etc.) However, there are restrictions on the software redistribution intended to prevent the package from losing its open-source status. Users are encouraged to submit their modifications back to the original distribution for the benefit of the whole community.

Community

Madagascar seeks to be an open and active community. Mailing lists are maintained, and annual meetings take place. See

Your contribution is welcome.

Why the Name "Madagascar"?

Whimsy, really. It seems easier to remember than the previous name "RSF", and it provides us interesting mascots.

History

Madagascar was first publicly presented at the EAGE Workshop in Vienna in June 2006. The work on the package (previously named RSF) was started by Sergey Fomel in 2003. Since then, many people have contributed to it. See AUTHORS.txt for an incomplete list.

While being written mostly from scratch, Madagascar borrows ideas from the design of SEPlib, an open-source package maintained by Bob Clapp at the Stanford Exploration Project (SEP). Generations of SEP students and researchers contributed to SEPlib. Most important contributions came from Rob Clayton, Jon Claerbout, Dave Hale, Stew Levin, Rick Ottolini, Joe Dellinger, Steve Cole, Dave Nichols, Martin Karrenbach, Biondo Biondi, and Bob Clapp.

Madagascar also borrows ideas from Seismic Unix (SU), a package maintained by John Stockwell at the Center for Wave Phenomenon (CWP) at the Colorado School of Mines (Stockwell, 1997; Stockwell, 1999). Main contributors to SU included Einar Kjartansson, Shuki Ronen, Jack Cohen, Chris Liner, Dave Hale, and John Stockwell. SU adopted an open-source BSD-style license starting with release 40 (April 10, 2007).

Salus, P. H., 1994, A quarter-century of Unix: Addison-Wesley.
Stockwell, J. W., 1997, Free software in education: A case study of CWP/SU: Seismic Unix: The Leading Edge, 16, 1045--1049.
--------, 1999, The CWP/SU: Seismic Un*x package: Computers and Geosciences, 25, 415--419.

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