Installation
============

Pre-compiled binaries
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Pre-compiled binaries of the ARTS interface for macOS and Linux including
the ARTS engine for performing RT simulations can be installed from the
conda-forge environment at the rttools channel:

.. code-block:: bash

    conda install -c rttools pyarts

Other versions are available on the `ARTS homepage <https://radiativetransfer.org/getarts/>`_.

ARTS depends heavily on catalog data. It is recommended to call :py:func:`pyarts.cat.download.retrieve` at the beginning of your Python scripts to download and cache the latest version of the ``arts-cat-data`` and ``arts-xml-data`` packages. Alternatively, you can download the matching catalog data manually from the `Github release <https://github.com/atmtools/arts/releases/>`_ page.


Building from source
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

See top level ``README.md`` at `our github repository <https://github.com/atmtools/arts>`_.

The API of ARTS is constantly being updated to suit our and our users future need.
Do not expect code compatibility between any two patches.

We strongly recommend to use the latest version of ARTS from conda unless you want to help with the development.