This document describes how to set up a development environment to modify, build and test MODFLOW 6. Details on how to contribute your code to the repository are found in the separate document CONTRIBUTING.md.
Before you can build and test MODFLOW 6, you must install and configure the following on your development machine:
- git
- Python3.8+
- a modern Fortran compiler
Some additional, optional tools are also discussed below.
Git and/or the GitHub app (for Mac or Windows). GitHub's Guide to Installing Git is a good source of information.
The GNU Fortran compiler gfortran
or the Intel Fortran compiler ifort
can be used to compile MODFLOW 6.
GNU Fortran can be installed on all three major platforms.
- fedora-based:
dnf install gcc-gfortran
- debian-based:
apt install gfortran
- Download the Minimalist GNU for Windows (MinGW) installer from Source Forge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/Toolchains%20targetting%20Win32/Personal%20Builds/mingw-builds/installer/mingw-w64-install.exe
- Run the installer. Make sure to change
Architecture
tox86_64
. Leave the other settings on default. - Find the
mingw64/bin
directory in the installation and add it to your PATH. FindEdit the system environment variables
in your Windows Start Screen. Click theEnvironmental Variables
button and double-click thePath
variable in the User Variables (the top table). Click theNew
button and enter the location of themingw64/bin
directory.
Intel Fortran can also be used to compile MODFLOW 6 and associated utilities. The ifort
compiler is available in the Intel oneAPI HPC Toolkit. An installer is bundled with the download. A minimal
A number of environment variables must be set before using Intel Fortran. General information can be found here, with specific instructions to configure a shell session for ifort
here.
On Windows, Visual Studio and a number of libraries must be installed for ifort
to work. The required libraries can be installed by ticking the "Desktop Development with C++" checkbox in the Visual Studio Installer's Workloads tab.
Note: Invoking the setvars.bat
scripts from a Powershell session will not put ifort
on the path, since batch script environments are local to their process. Either invoke ifort
from command prompt or relaunch PowerShell, e.g.
cmd.exe "/K" '"C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\oneAPI\setvars-vcvarsall.bat" && "C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\oneAPI\compiler\latest\env\vars.bat" && powershell'
Python 3.8+ is required to run MODFLOW 6 tests. A Conda distribution (e.g. miniconda or Anaconda is recommended. Python dependencies are specified in environment.yml
. To create an environment, run from the project root:
conda env create -f environment.yml
To update an existing environment:
conda env update -f environment.yml
This project depends critically on a few Python packages for building, linting and testing tasks:
meson
fprettify
pymake
flopy
These are each described briefly below. The Conda environment.yml
contains a number of other dependencies also required for various development tasks, but they are not described in detail here.
Meson is recommended for building MODFLOW 6 and is included in environment.yml
. It can also be installed independently — note that if you do so you will need to manually add the executable to the PATH.
fprettify
can be used to format Fortran source code and in combination with the MODFLOW 6 fprettify configuration establishes a contribution standard for properly formatted MODFLOW 6 Fortran source. This tool can be installed with pip
or conda
and used from the command line or integrated with a VSCode or Visual Studio development environment. The fprettify
package is included in the Conda environment in environment.yml
. See contribution guidelines for additional information.
The mfpymake
package can build MODFLOW 6 and related programs and artifacts (e.g. makefiles), and is used in particular by the distribution/build_makefiles.py
script. mfpymake
is included in the Conda environment in environment.yml
. To install separately, follow the instructions as explained on the README of the repository. The README also demonstrates basic usage.
flopy
is used throughout MODFLOW 6 tests to create, run and post-process models.
Like MODFLOW 6, flopy
is modular — for each MODFLOW 6 package there is generally a corresponding flopy
plugin. Plugins are generated dynamically from DFN files stored in this repository under doc/mf6io/mf6ivar/dfn
.
The tests use a set of shared fixtures and utilities provided by the modflow-devtools
package. This package is included in the Conda environment in environment.yml
.
Some other tools are useful but not required to develop MODFLOW 6.
This repository provides makefiles, generated by mfpymake
, which can be used to build MODFLOW 6 with GNU Make. For further instructions we refer to the GNU Make Manual.
Visual Studio installers can be downloaded from the official website. MODFLOW 6 solution files can be found in the msvs
folder.
Doxygen is used to generate the MODFLOW 6 source code documentation. Graphviz is used by doxygen to produce source code diagrams. LaTeX is used to generate the MODFLOW 6 release notes and Input/Output documents (docs/mf6io/mf6io.nightlybuild).
These programs can be installed from various sources, including by conda, macports, or from individual sources such as https://www.tug.org/. Details about USGS LaTeX libraries can be seen in addition to linux installs in the CI workflow for the docs (.github/workflows/ci-docs.yml
).
Fork and clone the MODFLOW 6 repository:
- Login to your GitHub account or create one by following the instructions given here.
- Fork the main MODFLOW 6.
- Clone your fork of the MODFLOW 6 repository and create an
upstream
remote pointing back to your fork.
# Clone your GitHub repository:
git clone [email protected]:<github username>/modflow6.git
# Go to the MODFLOW 6 directory:
cd modflow6
# Add the main MODFLOW 6 repository as an upstream remote to your repository:
git remote add upstream https://github.com/MODFLOW-USGS/modflow6.git
Meson is the recommended build tool for MODFLOW 6. Meson must be installed and on your PATH. Creating and activating the Conda environment environment.yml
should be sufficient for this.
Meson build configuration files are provided for MODFLOW 6 as well as zbud6
and mf5to6
utility programs:
meson.build
utils/zonebudget/meson.build
utils/mf5to6/meson.build
To build MODFLOW 6, first configure the build directory. By default Meson uses compiler flags for a release build. To create a debug build, add -Doptimization=0
to the following setup
command.
# bash (linux and macOS)
meson setup builddir --prefix=$(pwd) --libdir=bin
# cmd (windows)
meson setup builddir --prefix=%CD% --libdir=bin
Compile MODFLOW 6 by executing:
meson compile -C builddir
In order to run the tests the binaries have to be installed:
meson install -C builddir
The binaries can then be found in the bin
folder. meson install
also triggers a compilation if necessary, so executing meson install
is enough to get up-to-date binaries in the bin
folder.
Note: If using Visual Studio Code, you can use tasks as described here to automate the above.
MODFLOW 6 tests are driven with pytest
, with the help of plugins like pytest-xdist
and pytest-cases
. Testing dependencies are included in the Conda environment environment.yml
.
Note: the entire test suite should pass before a pull request is submitted. Tests run in GitHub Actions CI and a PR can only be merged with passing tests. See CONTRIBUTING.md
for more information.
A few tasks must be completed before running tests:
- build local MODFLOW 6 development version
- rebuild the last MODFLOW 6 release
- install additional executables
- update FloPy plugins
- clone MODFLOW 6 test model and example repositories
Tests expect binaries to live in the bin
directory relative to the project root, as configured above in the meson
commands. Binaries are organized as follows:
- local development binaries in the top-level
bin
folder - executables rebuilt in development mode from the latest release in
bin/rebuilt
- related programs installed from the executables distribution live in
bin/downloaded
Tests must be run from the autotest
folder.
Before running tests, the local development version of MODFLOW 6 must be built with meson
as described above. The autotest/build_exes.py
script is provided as a shortcut to easily rebuild local binaries. The script can be run from the project root with:
python autotest/build_exes.py
Alternatively, it can be run from the autotest
directory with pytest
:
pytest build_exes.py
By default, binaries will be placed in the bin
directory relative to the project root, as in the meson
commands described above. To change the location of the binaries, use the --path
option.
Tests require the latest official MODFLOW 6 release to be compiled in develop mode with the same Fortran compiler as the development version. A number of binaries distributed from the executables repo must also be installed. The script autotest/get_exes.py
does both of these things. It can be run from the project root with:
python autotest/get_exes.py
Alternatively, with pytest
from the autotest
directory:
pytest get_exes.py
By default, binaries will be placed in the bin
directory relative to the project root, as in the meson
commands described above. Nested bin/downloaded
and bin/rebuilt
directories are created to contain the rebuilt last release and the downloaded executables, respectively. To change the location of the binaries, use the --path
option.
Plugins should be regenerated from DFN files before running tests for the first time or after definition files change. This can be done with the autotest/update_flopy.py
script, which wipes and regenerates plugin classes for the flopy
installed in the Python environment.
Note: if you've installed a local version of flopy
from source, running this script can overwrite files in your repository.
There is a single optional argument, the path to the folder containing definition files. By default DFN files are assumed to live in doc/mf6io/mf6ivar/dfn
, making the following identical:
python autotest/update_flopy.py
python autotest/update_flopy.py doc/mf6io/mf6ivar/dfn
Some autotests load example models from external repositories:
MODFLOW-USGS/modflow6-testmodels
MODFLOW-USGS/modflow6-largetestmodels
MODFLOW-USGS/modflow6-examples
By default, the tests expect these repositories side-by-side with (i.e. in the same parent directory as) the modflow6
repository. If the repos are somewhere else, you can set the REPOS_PATH
environment variable to point to their parent directory. If external model repositories are not found, tests requiring them will be skipped.
Note: a convenient way to persist environment variables needed for tests is to store them in a .env
file in the autotest
folder. Each variable should be defined on a separate line, with format KEY=VALUE
. The pytest-dotenv
plugin will then automatically load any variables found in this file into the test process' environment.
The test model repos can simply be cloned — ideally, into the parent directory of the modflow6
repository, so that repositories live side-by-side:
git clone MODFLOW-USGS/modflow6-testmodels
git clone MODFLOW-USGS/modflow6-largetestmodels
First clone the example models repo:
git clone MODFLOW-USGS/modflow6-examples
The example models require some setup after cloning. Some extra Python dependencies are required to build the examples:
cd modflow6-examples/etc
pip install -r requirements.pip.txt
Then, still from the etc
folder, run:
python ci_build_files.py
This will build the examples for subsequent use by the tests.
Tests are driven by pytest
and must be run from the autotest
folder. To run tests in a particular file, showing verbose output, use:
pytest -v <file>
Tests can be run in parallel with the -n
option, which accepts an integer argument for the number of parallel processes. If the value auto
is provided, pytest-xdist
will use one worker per available processor.
pytest -v -n auto
Markers can be used to select subsets of tests. Markers provided in pytest.ini
include:
slow
: tests that take longer than a few seconds to completerepo
: tests that require external model repositorieslarge
: tests using large models (from themodflow6-examples
andmodflow6-largetestmodels
repos)regression
: tests comparing results from multiple versions
Markers can be used with the -m <marker>
option, and can be applied in boolean combinations with and
, or
and not
. For instance, to run fast tests in parallel, excluding regression tests:
pytest -v -n auto -m "not slow and not regression"
The --smoke
(short -S
) flag, provided by modflow-devtools
is an alias for the above:
pytest -v -n auto -S
Smoke testing is a form of integration testing which aims to test a decent fraction of the codebase quickly enough to run often during development.
Tests using models from external repositories can be selected with the repo
marker:
pytest -v -n auto -m "repo"
The large
marker is a subset of the repo
marker. To test models excluded from commit-triggered CI and only run on GitHub Actions nightly:
pytest -v -n auto -m "large"
Test scripts for external model repositories can also be run independently:
# MODFLOW 6 test models
pytest -v -n auto test_z01_testmodels_mf6.py
# MODFLOW 5 to 6 conversion test models
pytest -v -n auto test_z02_testmodels_mf5to6.py
# models from modflow6-examples repo
pytest -v -n auto test_z03_examples.py
# models from modflow6-largetestmodels repo
pytest -v -n auto test_z03_largetestmodels.py
Tests load external models from fixtures provided by modflow-devtools
. External model tests can be selected by model or simulation name, or by packages used. See the modflow-devtools
documentation for usage examples. Note that filtering options only apply to tests using external models, and will not filter tests defining models in code — for that, the pytest
built-in -k
option may be used.
Tests should ideally follow a few conventions for easier maintenance:
-
Use temporary directory fixtures. Tests which write to disk should use
pytest
's built-intmp_path
fixtures or one of the keepable temporary directory fixtures frommodflow-devtools
. This prevents tests from polluting one another's state. -
Use markers for convenient (de-)selection:
@pytest.mark.slow
if the test doesn't complete in a few seconds (this preserves the ability to quickly--smoke
test@pytest.mark.repo
if the test relies on external model repositories@pytest.mark.regression
if the test compares results from different versions
The test suite must pass before code can be merged, so be sure it passes locally before opening a PR.