Unidata McIDAS-X/-XCD - Supported Platforms

Supported Workstations

Unidata McIDAS-X and -XCD have been successfully built at the Unidata Program Center (UPC) and/or SSEC on platforms listed in the following table.

Vendor	Operating System(s)	Compilers	X Server/X Window System
Apple	MacOS-X 12.3 (Apple)(1)	gcc 12.2, gfortran 12.2	XQuartz 2.8.3
Apple	MacOS-X 12.3 (Intel)(1)	gcc 11.2, gfortran 11.2	XQuartz 2.8.1
RedHat/CentOS/Rocky	Enterprise 7.9	gcc 4.8.5, gfortran 4.8.5	X11(2) and KDE Plasma(2) or Xfce(2)
RedHat/CentOS/Rocky	Enterprise 8.x	gcc 8.5, gfortran 8.5	X11(2) and KDE Plasma(2) or Xfce(2)
Cononical	Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, 22.04 LTS(4)	gcc, gfortran packaged with OS	X11, packaged with OS

Note(s):

1. MacOS and OS X Notes:

On macOS systems, the compilers and system utilities must be installed in a specific order.

On macOS systems, the installation instructions are different for machines with Intel processors than machines with Apple silicon processors.

In order to build and install McIDAS-X on macOS, you must install the Xcode Developer Tools and Command Line Tools on your workstation. Xcode is available via the App Store and from https://developer.apple.com. Command Line Tools are available at https://developer.apple.com/download/more/ (developer login required).

XQuartz is available for free at http://xquartz.macosforge.org/. SSEC recommends installing the latest available version.

The gcc and gfortran compilers are available for free at http://hpc.sourceforge.net. These compilers must be reinstalled if Xcode is updated.

On macOS 11.x systems, after installing the compilers, you must install the Command Line Tools again, and then install the SDK headers (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Packages/macOS_SDK_headers_for_macOS_11.6.pkg).

2. SSEC and the UPC have found that the Tcl/Tk-based GUIs bundled with McIDAS-X do not work correctly (or at all) in the Wayland/GNOME3 environment that is available in RHEL/CentOS/Rocky 8.x. We have found, however, that the GUIs work correctly in X11/Xfce and X11/KDE Plasma environments.

   NB: At the time that this document was being prepared, it was necessary to add the EPEL repository to 'yum/dnf' searches so that the Xfce and/or KDE Plasma environments can be installed.

SSEC recommends use of the KDE Plasma environment. UPC testing has found the lighter weight Xfce environment to be preferable to the KDE Plasma environment.

3. McIDAS-XCD is tested at the UPC exclusively on one platform, Rocky 8.7 x86_64 Linux.
4. User sites have reported successful building and running under Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, and 22.04 LTS.