How to Install the Radtran C and Fortran Libraries and Associated Tools
======================================================================= 

   Installation of libRadtran is relatively simple. Prior to
installation you may want to download additional software to build a
libRadtran with all options envoked. Usually libRadtran also requires
several GNU tools to be installed already. What you need and how to
get it is specified below. 

   To unpack, configure and build libRadtran is a simple three step
process:

   1. To unpack either do (power users)

        tar -xzvf libRadtran-version_number.tar.gz

      or struggle with poor man's tar

        gzip -d libRadtran-version_number.tar.gz
        tar -xvf  libRadtran-version_number.tar

   2. Configure libRadtran for your system       

        cd libRadtran-version_number
        ./configure

   3. Compile and link the thing

        make

After a succesful build you may want to test some of the tools coming
with libRadtran. Try

        make check

The libRadtran tools, including uvspec, are found in the tools
directory. Sample input files are found in the examples
directory. Please play.

Additional stuff to get a complete libRadtran
=============================================

   LibRadtran will build and the tools will run nicely without the
below software. However, some of us have special needs and must have
these options included as well. If you do not recognize what we are
talking about below, you probably do not need it and may happily
ignore it. 

 * To include the correlated-k stuff of Kato et al. libnetcdf is
   needed. Two options exist to include it.

    -You have a nice sysadm that has already put it on your
     system:-) If so it will be detected during the configuration
     process and automagically included.

    -You have to get it yourself from
     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/index.html
     and build it yourself. To tell configure where you put
     libnetcdf invoke configure as 
       ./configure --with-libnetcdf=/home/yourname/location 
     The ck-stuff will be included.


Recommended Tools to Install libRadtran
=======================================

   We recommend installing the following GNU tools before attempting to
build libRadtran

   * `make' 3.75 (or higher)

     You need the latest version of GNU `make'.  Modifying libRadtran 
     to work with other `make' programs would be  so hard that we
     recommend you port GNU `make' instead.  *Really.* 
     We recommend version GNU `make' version 3.75 or later.

   * GCC 2.7.2.1 (or higher) and g77 or f2c

     LibRadtran is known to compile and link without problems on
     systems with gcc and either g77 or f2c. We recommend GCC version
     2.7.2 or later. 

   In addition Perl version 5.004 or later is needed to run the tests
   and some of the tools.

   The GNU tools are available from http://www.gnu.org and perl from
   http://www.perl.org. 

Reporting Bugs
==============

   There are probably bugs in the Radtran C and Fortran libraries.
There are certainly errors and omissions in the manual.  If you report
them, they will get fixed.  If you don't, no one will ever know about
them and they will remain unfixed for all eternity, if not longer.

   To report a bug, first you must find it.  Hopefully, this will be the
hard part.  Once you've found a bug, make sure it's really a bug. Once
you're sure you've found a bug, try to narrow it down to the smallest
test case that reproduces the problem.   

   The final step when you have a simple test case is to report the bug.
When reporting a bug, send your test case, the results you got, the
results you expected, what you think the problem might be (if you've
thought of anything), your system type, and the version of libRadtran
you are using.  

   Send bug reports to the Internet address
bug@libradtran.org'.  If you have other problems with
installation or use, please report those as well. 

   If you are not sure how a function should behave, and the manual
doesn't tell you, that's a bug in the manual.  Report that too!  If the
function's behavior disagrees with the manual, then either the libRadtran
or the manual has a bug, so report the disagreement.