Installation

There are two ways to get the GW Data Plotter app:

  1. Download the executable file from the Zenodo repository and run it on your desktop.

  2. Download the source code from the GitHub repository and run the main Python script.

Running the executable

The simplest way to run GW Data Plotter is to download the executable file suitable for your operating system (OS) from Zenodo. Executable files are available for all major OS: Windows, Linux, and macOS. Below we provide additional instructions for each OS.

For Linux users

Since the app is an executable file, the user must grant execution rights to it. This can be done via the terminal with the command:

chmod u=rwx /<path_where_the_app_is_saved>/GW_data_plotter_LinuxOS

For Windows users

  • When trying to run the app you may get a Windows security message, intended to remind users not to open untrusted files downloaded from the Internet.

  • You will have to confirm your decision to open the file to proceed and run the app.

For macOS users

When downloading the executable file, make sure to select the correct version of the app for your macOS version.

  • Choose the file ending in arm64 if you use a Mac users with an Apple processor (M1 or M2 chip), or the file ending in x86_64 if you use an Intel processor.

  • To verify which processor you have, click on the Apple logo on the top left of your screen, and then on About this Mac.

In addition, since this app doesn’t come from the Apple App Store and is not directly notarized by Apple yet, when you try to open it by double-clicking on the icon the system will display a warning message that doesn’t allow you to open it.

  • To avoid this problem you can change the Privacy & Security settings as explained in this link.

  • Alternatively, you can also press Ctrl while clicking on the app’s icon. This will open a menu, from which you have to select Open. At this point, you will see the same warning window you saw before with the addition of the option Open.

Running from source

After downloading the code locally from the GitHub repository, you will need to set up an appropriate conda environment to run the app. We provide yml files so that you can build directly the conda environment for your machine in the folder conda_environments. You can select the environment more suited for your OS and then create the environment with:

conda env create --file <environment.yml>

replacing <environment.yml> with the appropriate name of the environment file for your machine.

The available environment files are the following:

  • environment_LinuxOS.yml for Linux users

  • environment_MacOS_arm64.yml for macOS users with an Apple processor

  • environment_MacOS_x86_64.yml for macOS users with an Intel processor

  • environment_WindowsOS.yml for Windows users

Then you can activate the environment with:

conda activate app

The app’s source code contains three Python scripts:

  • gw_data_plotter.py: main script

  • layout.py: it is imported by the main script and contains the details of the layout of the app

  • app_resources.py: it is imported by the main script and contains the resources used by the app (e.g fonts, icons)

To run the app, you can execute the main script on a terminal with:

python gw_data_plotter.py