Research Note #21 - Compiling Fortran Script for NetCDF Data Processing

NetCDF data is become more and more important for my research, thus it's necessary to work with it with my own program, in Fortran (F90). The compilation anyway, a little bit tricky and slightly different with ordinary Fortran compilation. Here are the simple steps to compile it, using Intel Fortran compiler:

1. Make sure NetCDF module has been installed and declared in the system path.

The path for NetCDF module is : $NETCDF/include

If the path has not yet existed, make a soft link of the module file to current directory:

ln -sf $NETCDF/include/netcdf.mod

2. Compile the Fortran code to make an object file

Let's say the code file name is 'test.f90', then execute:

$ ifort -c test.f90 -I$NETCDF/include

Or, if the path of NetCDF module has existed, just simply:

$ ifort -c test.f90

Make sure no problems occur.

3. Finally, link the object file to an executable file:

$ ifort -o test.exe test.o -I$NETCDF/include -L$NETCDF/lib -lnetcdff -lnetcdf

Same as step 2, if the module path has existed:

$ ifort -o test.exe test.o -L$NETCDF/lib -lnetcdff -lnetcdf

If everything's OK, then an exe file will be created in the current directory. The most important thing, don forget to include '-lnetcdff', because since release 4.1.3, the Fortran library is no longer combined with C library. One hint is by checking if there are file named 'libnetcdff' in the $NETCDF/lib directory. If they are there, the argument '-lnetcdff' should be added in the compile command.