The vast majority of the HOPS software is written in FORTRAN-77. The remaining pieces are written in MATLAB.
All HOPS installations have been done on Unix operating systems.
Currently there are five (5) software packages we use to support HOPS. Two of these are absolutely required. Two more may be required, depending upon which functionalities of HOPS are desired.
| Required | Conditionally Required | Recommended |
| NetCDF | MATLAB® | NCAR Graphics® |
| GNU's Make Utility | PVM |
NetCDF is a freeware library to support a machine independent binary data format. By writing HOPS output in this format, users of HOPS on different machines can directly share their results. Using a standard format like netCDF ensures that a number of other packages can read the HOPS output.
The use of the netCDF is absolutely required, unless the user wishes to rewrite the output sections of HOPS.
To download the latest copy of netCDF use either of these links:
The Free Software Foundation maintains the GNU project, a free Unix-like operating system. We've turned to the GNU make utility for a couple of reasons. First, and foremost, the syntax and capabilities of the GNU make utility are consistent across all platforms. This greatly simplifies our ability to maintain the HOPS package, especially on systems we don't have access to. Secondly, some of these capabilities are just not found on most make utilities but are extremely handy to have.
The use of the GNU's Make Utility is absolutely required, unless the user wishes to create his/her own Makefiles (which could be especially cumbersome for the HOPS-PE model).
To download the latest copy of netCDF use any of these links:
MathWorks licenses MATLAB, an "integrated technical computing environment" which is not cheap but is a very convenient environment in which to develop applications.
The use of MATLAB is required if you plan to use the topography conditioning package.
The use of MATLAB is strongly recommended if you plan to use the masking package. The MATLAB Graphic User Interface makes masking much easier.
PVM is a freeware package to allow inter-process communications over a heterogeneous network.
The use of PVM is required if you plan to use the Primitive Equation model's two-way nesting capability.
To download the latest copy of PVM use the following link:
NCAR maintains an inexpensive graphics package, which we use for our visualization software. The relative inexpense is because you get a site license
The use of the NCAR Graphics is only required if you wish to use our visualization package.