Installation

Requirements

Python 3.10–3.12 is recommended. Python 3.13+ has not been tested with all dependencies and is not recommended for production use.

Install oceanarray

oceanarray is on PyPI:

pip install oceanarray

This pulls in its dependencies, including seasenselib — the reader oceanarray uses for raw instrument files in stage 1.

In an isolated environment (recommended)

Option A — conda

conda create -n oceanarray python=3.11
conda activate oceanarray
pip install oceanarray

Option B — venv

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate        # macOS / Linux
# venv\Scripts\activate         # Windows
pip install oceanarray

Option C — uv

uv is a fast drop-in replacement for pip and venv (add --python 3.11 to uv venv to pin the interpreter):

uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate       # macOS / Linux
uv pip install oceanarray

To install just the oceanarray command-line tool in its own isolated environment (on your PATH, no venv to activate):

uv tool install oceanarray

Development install (from source)

git clone https://github.com/ocean-uhh/oceanarray
cd oceanarray
pip install -e ".[dev]"        # or: uv pip install -e ".[dev]"

The -e flag installs in editable mode so that any local changes take effect immediately without reinstalling. The [dev] extra adds the test and docs tooling plus ruff in one resolution. To also work on PDF report output (WeasyPrint, which needs native pango/cairo libraries) use pip install -e ".[all]" — everything, equivalent to .[dev,pdf]. See Troubleshooting if a dependency fails to build.

Stage 1 and seasenselib

Stage 1 (reading raw instrument files) needs seasenselib, which is installed automatically with oceanarray (above). Without seasenselib, stage 1 processing cannot run. Stages 2–3 and mooring-level processing (stack, grid, reports) can still run on existing NetCDF files. See Troubleshooting if the install fails.

RDI ADCP support

Processing RDI WorkHorse ADCP files (file_type: rdi-raw) needs no extra install: seasenselib reads them via mhkit[dolfyn], which is pulled in automatically with oceanarray.

Verify the installation

oceanarray --version

If this prints a version string, the installation is complete. See the Quickstart Guide for the next steps.