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CTSM Quickstart Guide for Users

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Samuel Levis edited this page Jun 1, 2024 · 14 revisions

Quick start

To download and start using CTSM, pointing to the latest release code, execute the following commands:

git clone -b release-clm5.0 https://github.com/ESCOMP/CTSM.git clm5.0

cd clm5.0

./manage_externals/checkout_externals

Note that the checkout_externals command, starting with ctsm5.2.007, changes to

./bin/git-fleximod update

If you want to contribute changes to the model see the "CTSM Quickstart guide for Developers" below which recommends using the main development branch rather than the release branch we show here.

If you later switch the version you have checked out by running git checkout, be sure to rerun ./manage_externals/checkout_externals or with tag ctsm5.2.007 or newer ./bin/git-fleximod update in order to obtain the correct versions of the submodules (previously known as externals).

For further documentation, quickstart guides, diagnostics, model output and references, see

Details on these commands

The above git clone command checks out the release-clm5.0 branch (you can confirm this by running git branch from inside the clm5.0 directory). If you'd prefer to use the latest development version, you can leave off -b release-clm5.0; this will give you the master branch by default. The master branch is a good starting point for model development, but generally should not be used for scientific production runs. After cloning the code, you can also run git tag to see a list of available tags that you can check out. However, note that tags prior to clm4_5_18_r273 will not run (they are included only for historical reference).

The checkout_externals command (git-fleximod in ctsm5.2.007 and later tags) downloads the submodules needed to build and run CTSM: CIME, MOSART, FATES, etc. For more details on this tool, including instructions for changing the versions of these submodules, see the file README_EXTERNALS.rst (README_GITFLEXIMOD.rst in ctsm5.2.007 and later tags) at the top level of your CTSM directory.

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