Geomorph - Downloading and Installing

Downloading Geomorph
Geomorph for FreeBSD
Downloading Povray
Software requirements
Hardware requirements
Installing Geomorph from the source package
Installing Geomorph from the binary package
Installing the documentation

Downloading Geomorph

The current version is 0.50. A 32-bit binary distribution is also provided.

From version 0.30, the documentation is packaged separately. This is a mirror of the web site, excluding the galleries and the screenshots, which are external links to the site. The archive contains the english and the french version. If you have a permanent Internet connection, you may set the "doc_dir" variable in the geomorphrc file to a link to the Geomorph web site, instead of downloading the documentation archive.

Version
Date
Source
Binary
Documentation
0.50 August the 1st, 2008 geomorph-0.50.tgz geomorph-0.50-bin.tgz geomorph-doc-20080801.tgz
0.40 February the 23rd, 2007
geomorph-0.40.tgz geomorph-0.40-bin.tgz geomorph-doc-20070221.tgz
0.31 November the 18th, 2005 geomorph-0.31.tgz geomorph-0.31-bin.tgz geomorph-doc-20051125.tgz
0.30
October the 31st, 2005
geomorph-0.30.tgz geomorph-0.30-bin.tgz geomorph-doc-20051031.tgz
0.22b February the 2nd, 2005
geomorph-0.22b.tgz geomorph-0.22b-bin.tgz Included
0.22
October the 31th, 2004
geomorph-0.22.tgz geomorph-0.22-bin.tgz Included
0.21
August the 16th, 2004
geomorph-0.21.tgz
geomorph-0.21-bin.tgz
Included
0.20
May the 7th, 2004
geomorph-0.20.tgz
geomorph-0.20-bin.tgz
Included
0.12
November the 16th, 2003
geomorph-0.12.tgz
geomorph-0.12-bin.tgz
Included
0.11
September the 20th, 2003
geomorph-0.11.tgz
geomorph-0.11-bin.tgz 
Included

Geomorph for FreeBSD

Dmitry
Marakasov has ported Geomorph to FreeBSD, beginning with version 0.31. It is available here.


Downloading POV-Ray

POV-Ray is not mandatory, but is a must if you want to see your height field in a scene other than the rough preview. Even if you aren't familiar with the tool, you can render the scenes provided with Geomorph.

POV-Ray is free, but not open source in its actual version.  If it's not included in your Linux distribution, you can download the software on www.povray.org as a "tar" package. For an Ubuntu system, you can find the package in the "multiverse" section. Rpm packages are also available for some Mandriva / Mandrake distributions on the Penguin Liberation Front site.

You should install POV-Ray before Geomorph, so that the Geomorph install process detects the name of the POV-ray executable. Otherwise, you'll have to write yourself the name of the program in the geomorphrc configuration file.


Software requirements

Geomorph 0.50 is based on the GTK+2 libraries (v. 2.4 and later) and uses OpenGL (MesaGL) for the 3D preview.

The Geomorph 0.50 binary is compiled in 32-bit mode on Debian 4.0 (Etch). It has been tested on Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10, Fedora 8 and OpenSuse 10.3.

The Geomorph 0.50 source compiles on these distributions, provided that the development packages for GTK+2, MesaGL, libgtkglext and libpng are installed. The (lib)gtkglext-devel package is generally not installed and is absent from many of the distribution DVDs, but can be find on the Internet, for instance by searching on http://rpm.pbone.net.

Under Ubuntu 7.x, seclecting libgtkglext1-dev in Synaptic selects all the required libraries as dependencies.

Geomorph runs in 64-bit mode, but you have to compile it yourself.

Some video card drivers under some distributions create a significant memory leak related to OpenGL and the hardware acceleration of the video card (DRI - "direct rendering"). Read the FAQ for further explanations.

If you encounter problems when running Geomorph, I suggest that you start it in a X terminal, check the messages and inform me.


Hardware requirements

Geomorph hardware requirements depend mainly on the height fields size, the number of open documents and the number of undo levels.

Here is the basic recommended setup for editing 512x512 height fields:
If the vertical size of your desktop is not makes using Geomorph harder, try to set your interface style to the "Gimp style" (many windows), instead of the default integrated interface. The interface style is specified in the geomorphrc file.

The recommended amount of memory was evaluated by creating 5 documents and filling up an undo/redo stack of 5 levels for each of them. The memory used by Geomorph then reaches a value between 70 and 80 MB. The undo/redo stack size can be set in the geomorphrc file.

When the hardware acceleration of the video card is activated (DRI), the memory use depends on the video card driver and the distribution. Editing 5 documents may require as low as 100 MB and as much as 260 MB. A 260 MB use means at least a 384 MB system. This does not depends on Geomorph, and fortunately, the hardware acceleration can be unactivated for Geomorph alone if a memory problem is encountered (see the FAQ).

Running POV-Ray also requires memory, as long as the scene output is not closed. On an Ubuntu 7.10 x64 setup, with POV-Ray 3.6, the rendering of one 640x480 result from a 512x512 height field uses approximately 3.0 MB.


Installing Geomorph from the source package

The steps are the same for the first installation or for upgrading.

If you are short on disk space, you may want to uninstall the older version before (see step 8, to be done in the directory where you uncompressed the old package).

1. Open a console and untar the archive:

tar zxf geomorph-0.5x.tgz

2. Change to the Geomorph directory:

cd geomorph-0.5x

3. Build the software:

./configure
make


4. Under Ubuntu, install the executable in root mode this way:

sudo make install

... then go to step 7.

Under most other distributions, logon as "root":

su

5. Install the executable:

make install

6. Leave the root account:

exit

7. Install yourself as a user.

./install-user


This script creates a /home/.../geomorph directory, a configuration file in this directory and installs shortcuts on the Gnome and KDE desktops.

Notes for upgrading:  
  1. If a ~/geomorph/scenes directory already contains the scenes provided with Geomorph, the older scenes are renamed as <something>_old.pov and the newer one are copied into the directory.
  2. The geomorphrc file is not replaced. It would be upgraded with the new variables, if required, the next time you save the file from the provided dialog.

8. "make uninstall" as root would uninstall Geomorph.  However, the users won't be uninstalled. From version 0.30 and up, the documentation won't be erased either, because it's installed separately.


Installing Geomorph from the binary package


The steps are the same for the first installation or for upgrading.

If you are short on disk space, you may want uninstall the older version before (see step 7, to be done in the directory where you uncompressed the old package).

1. Open a console and untar the archive:

tar zxf geomorph-0.5x-bin.tgz

2. Change to the Geomorph directory:

cd geomorph-0.5x

3. Under Ubuntu, run the install script this way:

sudo ./install-bin

... then go to step 6.

With other distributions, first logon as "root":

su

4. Install the program:

./install-bin

5. Leave the root account:

exit

6. Install yourself as a user.

./install-user

See the comments for step 7 of the source install process, specially if you are upgrading.

7. "./uninstall" as root in the same directory would uninstall Geomorph, but without removing any of the users' directories and configuration files.

From version 0.30 and up, this does note delete the html documentation either, because it's installed separateley.

Installing the documentation

The documentation of version 0.30 and later is available separately, in an achive whose name is geomorph-doc-AAAA-MM.tgz.

1. Open a console and untar the archive:

tar zxf geomorph-doc-AAAA-MM.tgz

2. Change to the Geomorph documentation directory:

cd geomorph-doc

3. Logon as "root":

su

4. Execute the install script:

./install-doc

5. Leave the root account:

exit

Under Ubuntu, steps 3, 4 and 5 are replaced by:

sudo ./install-doc

The install script copies the files in /usr/local/share/geomorph/doc.

If an older version of the documentation exists in /usr/local/share/geomorph/doc, it is overwritten. The script won't overwrite the installed documentation with an older one. This directory contains a file named "VERSION" with the date of the version, and the script creates here a "stamp" file with the installation date.

6. If you want an access to these documents from the Geomorph menu, set the doc_dir variable in the geomorphrc file to/usr/local/share/geomorph/doc/index.html, the first time a documentation for Geomorph 0.30 or later is installed.

You can delete the documentation from your file manager or by typing this command, as root:
rm -rf /usr/local/share/geomorph/doc

Be careful when you type the directory name, because this command does not ask for confirmation before sending your files in the nothingness (-f is the "force" option).



Last revision August the 1st, 2008


Contact:    Patrice St-Gelais


SourceForge.net Logo