NCSU GIS/MEA582: Geospatial Modeling and Analysis
Authors
Copyright 2008-2022 by
- Helena Mitasova
- Rob Austin
- Anna Petrasova
- Vaclav Petras
- Paul Paris
Course developed at North Carolina State University, Center for Geospatial Analytics and Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences.
See the license below.
Online version of the materials
The (static) website for this course is using GitHub pages and the URL is:
Old URLs (for archival purposes):
https://ncsu-osgeorel.github.io/geospatial-modeling-course
https://courses.ncsu.edu/gis582/common
https://courses.ncsu.edu/mea582/common/GIST.html
Basic Git introduction
Clone this repository using git clone and the URL from the green button
near the top of the page (this is a Git alternative to downloading a ZIP file).
Change directory (using cd) into the newly created directory.
Once you edit some files, use git commit to commit them. Use -a flag to
commit all or specify the filenames to commit just some of them.
Use -m "some commit message" to describe the changes you made.
The fastest way to commit might be, for example:
git commit -am "updated for GRASS GIS 7"
If you want to provide a longer commit message, just omit the -m "..." and
you will get an editor (nano by default) where you can write a commit message.
If you created a new file, you have to tell Git to start tracking it:
git add some_file.txt
If you want to delete or move files, use git rm and git mv.
To see what files where changed, added or deleted use git status.
To review the changes in the files use git diff.
The commit itself records the change locally but does not put the change
to the remote repository.
Once you are ready to share your changes with others use git push
to put the changes to the remote repository.
All commits which were not pushed yet will by pushed.
To get the changes of other contributors use git pull.
You always have to pull before you push. It is often necessary to commit
your changes before git pull otherwise Git will not be able to merge
the incoming changes. If you get an editor with a message about merging,
it is enough just to use the generated message by exiting the editor
(using Ctrl+X in case the editor is nano).
If the automatic merge is not possible, Git will put the conflicting parts
into the files and mark them. Consult the further steps with other contributors.
Build and publish
Web page is published using GitHub pages. The pages are build from the source code and placed into a separate directory. The publishing step is done using a script which makes GitHub pages publishing even easier than it already is.
Building the pages
In your clone of the repository where you are in master branch,
use build.sh script to build the pages.
./build.sh
The directory where pages are build is inside the directory with
the source code and is named build.
You can look at the pages using e.g.
firefox build/index.html
If you don't see the changes you have made, delete the file in the build directory and build again (the mechanism to recognize changes is not smart).
To build lectures go to the lecture directory and run the build.sh
for lectures script there, i.e.:
cd lectures
./build.sh
It is important to always be in the directory where the build.sh
script is for each part.
Publishing the pages
Once the changed and committed and pushed to the master branch, the website will be deployed automatically using GitHub Actions.
New semester checklist
A list of what should be changed, updated or checked for new semester in the web pages.
- change dates in the schedule (in this repository)
- update links to the Moodle site
- create a new page for project titles and link it
- search for all other occurrences of string
term-changesand update - update to current GRASS GIS release
- email students with link to the website and to Moodle
The term-changes should be added to all places which needs to be
changed each semester (term). To HTML it should be added as a class.
All occurrences can be found using:
grep -IrnE term-changes --exclude=README.md --exclude-dir={build,.git}
New calendar year changes
Change the copyright years in this readme and in foot.html.
Confirm with:
grep -Irn "[^0-9]old_year_here[^0-9]"
Updating for new GRASS GIS releases
Update commands URLs for documentation:
grep -IrnE grassXY --exclude=README.md --exclude-dir={build,.git}
./replace_string.sh grassXY grassXZ
Now run the grep command again, to get what the script does not handle.
Find also other locations where a specific GRASS GIS version is
mentioned (replace X and Y with version number):
grep -IrnE "[^0-9]X\.Y[^0-9]" --exclude=README.md --exclude-dir={build,.git}
Testing GRASS GIS assignments
Prepare new directory and mapset:
mkdir test
cd test
ln -s ../grass/data data
grass -c -e ~/grassdata/nc_spm_08_grass7/test/
For each assignment:
../doc2tests.py < ../grass/buffers_cost.html > test.sh
chmod u+x test.sh
grass ~/grassdata/nc_spm_08_grass7/test/ --exec ./test.sh
Now, inspect the output and files in the directory.
Then delete the created maps and images.
grass ~/grassdata/nc_spm_08_grass7/test/ --exec g.remove type=raster,vector patter="*" -f
rm *.png
After all tests, remove the directory and the mapset:
cd ..
rm -r test
rm -r ~/grassdata/nc_spm_08_grass7/test/
Automatic indexes
Topics index and GRASS GIS assignments index are generated automatically.
The process is split into two phases. First, links to pages are extracted
from a given page. This introduces the desired order of the linked pages
(alternative would be, e.g. alphabetical order based on file names
and directory listing). In the second phase, individual files are search
for the main heading and optionally subheadings. These headings
are used to create the text in the index page.
See extract-links.py, generate-index.py and build.sh for details.
Subtopics are extracted from the topics pages when they have class="subtopic".
License
The text and images in this repository are under CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Note that a lot of things are just linked material or data from different sources which can have different licenses.
The license does not apply to logos included in the web pages.