GMT

Installing GMT

The Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) are a suite of tools for making maps. The graphics generated with default settings in GMT exceed in many ways those which would come out of most users’ ArcGIS work. Admittedly, GMT does come with a steep learning curve, not excluding the installation process. For earlier versions of GMT (4.x.x) installation is more simple and direct, as you can just install from the Ubuntu Software Center (or other package managers), however, these managers typically don’t have the most recent versions — in this case GMT version 5.1.x.

Without further adieu, in the following steps, we will collect the necessary components of the GMT install, compile, and install. Most of the guide comes from the GMT website, but is supplemented with some of what I think are helpful details for new users to GMT.

READ: This guide uses the terminal and a file explorer, but the entire install can be done from the terminal; in some steps incomplete commands to do operations via terminal are listed in square brackets […] where items in carrot brackets must be replaced with system/your-install specific items <…>. All terminal commands listed without brackets are required for successful install.

1) Begin by installing several dependency packages. Running the following command will be sufficient, as any already installed packages will be skipped.

For Ubuntu 16.04 to 17.10:

sudo apt-get install subversion ghostscript build-essential cmake libnetcdf-dev libgdal1-dev libfftw3-dev libpcre3-dev

For Ubuntu 18.04 (and later?):

sudo apt install subversion ghostscript build-essential cmake libnetcdf-dev libfftw3-dev libpcre3-dev libgdal-dev gdal-bin

2) Download the latest stable version of GMT using

svn checkout svn://gmtserver.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt5/trunk gmt5-dev

3) Visit the GMT download page and download the latest versions of the packages titled “gshhg-gmt-x.x.x.tar.gz” and “dcw-gmt-x.x.x.tar.gz”.

wget http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/files/download?name=dcw-gmt-x.x.x.tar.gz

4) Copy each compressed folder into the directory downloaded via subversion — this should be located at ~/gmt5-dev by default. Uncompress the folders here.

cd ~/gmt5-dev

cp ./ && cp ./

tar -zxvf gshhg-gmt-x.x.x.tar.gz

5) In the ~/gmt5-dev folder, enter the cmake folder, make a copy of the ConfigUserTemplate.cmakefile and rename the copy to ConfigUser.cmake. Open this file in an editor.

cp ConfigUserTemplate.cmake ./ConfigUser.cmake

gedit ConfigUser.cmake

6) You need to edit the following lines of this file:

a. enable (uncomment) line 112 (set (GSHHG_ROOT…) and replace the path name with the absolute path to the gshhg-gmt-x.x.x folder.

b. enable copy in line 115

c. enable line 118 and replace the path name with the absolute path to the dcw-gmt-x.x.x folder.

d. enable copy in line 121

Save the file and return to the terminal. NOTE: the line numbers may change with updates by the GMT devs to the .cmake file.

7) cd into the ~/gmt5-dev folder and execute the following commands, waiting to finish each time.

mkdir build

cd build

cmake ..

make

sudo make install

That should complete your install of GMT 5.1.x! To test the install, try the following command into a new terminal window

gmt pscoast -R-130/-30/-50/50 -Jm0.025i -B30g30:.Mercator: -Di -W > mercator.ps