Quickstart

Installing

You can install validate with pip from pypi:

pip install validate

or the latest version directly from github

pip install git+https://github.com/swartn/validate.git

validate has primarily been developed and tested within the anaconda python distribution on Linux x86/x64 and Mac OSX. Windows is not supported.

You can (should) do this inside a virtual environment. In that case it will work without root privileges. If you are using anaconda see http://conda.pydata.org/docs/faq.html#env.

Dependencies

The external package Climate Data Operators (cdo) v1.6 or later is required. Python dependencies are in theory handled automatically by pip, but often things go smoother if you have these items available:

validate has primarily been developed and tested within the anaconda python distribution on Linux x86/x64 and Mac OSX, where dependencies were installed with conda. Windows is not supported.

Using validate

After a succesful installation, you should move to a working directory (preferably empty). Be careful working in populated directories as validate may remove or modify files or directories with particular names.

To setup the configuration file use the command:

validate-configure

which will provide a conf.yaml file. Follow the examples in this file to specify the plots you desire, and make sure to modify the “data_root” variable to point to the data on your system. Once the changes have been made, save the conf.yaml file in your working directory and once use the command:

validate-execute -r [runID]

The generated plots can be found in the /plots directory and details about the plots in the /log directory.