GeoCAT-comp is both the whole computational component of the GeoCAT project and a single Github repository as described here. As the computational component of GeoCAT, GeoCAT-comp provides implementations of computational functions for operating on geosciences data. Many of these functions originated in NCL and were translated into Python with the help of GeoCAT-comp; however, developers are welcome to come up with novel computational functions for geosciences data.
Many of the computational functions under GeoCAT-comp are implemented in Fortran (or possibly C). However, others can be implemented in a pure Python fashion. To facilitate contribution, the whole GeoCAT-comp computational component is split into three Github repositories with respect to being pure-Python, Python with Cython wrappers for compiled codes, and compiled language (C and Fortran) implementations. Such implementation layers are handled within GeoCAT-comp (this repository), GeoCAT-ncomp, and libncomp repositories, respectively (GeoCAT-ncomp and libncomp repos are documented on their own).
GeoCAT-comp repo does not explicitly contain or require any compiled code, making it more accessible to the general Python community at large. However, if GeoCAT-ncomp is installed, then all functions contained in the “geocat.ncomp” module are imported into the “geocat.comp” namespace. Thus, GeoCAT-comp repo serves as a user API to access the entire computational toolkit even though the repo itself only contains pure Python code from the contributor’s perspective. Whenever prospective contributors want to add new computational functionality implemented as pure Python, GeoCAT-comp is the repo to do so. Therefore, there is no onus on contributors of pure python code to build/compile/test any compiled code (Cython, C, C++, Fortran) at GeoCAT-comp level.
GeoCAT-comp documentation on Read the Docs
Please see our documentation for installation and build instructions.
GeoCAT-comp provides a high-level Xarray interface under the
geocat.comp namespace. However, a stripped-down NumPy interface is used under the hood to bridge
the gap between NumPy arrays and the C data structures used by libncomp. These functions are
accessible under the geocat.comp._ncomp namespace, but are minimally documented and are
intended primarily for internal use.