Grid2GMT: upgrade supported GMT version and change to bash script?

[sean0921]

I think both changes can improve the maintainability of this project:

• change GMT script format to let it compatible with >= 5 can let more people access this tool without install GMT 4.x manually
• change script type from csh to bash and use more POSIX and bash feature (e.g. set -x) for easier tracing and debugging GMT scripts.

I already make some patch for a bit older beta version(1, 2), if this kind of change is acceptable, I will also make PR for this issue.

[alomax]

I agree. Especially for csh to bash!

But for GMT, this means changing C code in Grid2GMT.c that generates the GMT scripts - not a minor task to modify, debug and verify. I have not made these changes because:

• I rarely use Grid2GMT, I use SeismicityViewer for visualizing NLLoc locations. I mainly use Grid2GMT for verifying velocity and travel-time grids.
• I did change GMT4 to GMT5 for another (real-time) project, but had to revert to GMT4 because GMT5 was much too slow! GenericMappingTools/gmt#587 (comment)
• There is now a GMT6, which may or may not be backwards compatible with GMT5. In general, I do not see how low- or no-budget developers of research software (sometimes well established, mission-critical!) are supposed to find the time and funding to keep up with quite frequent (as little as 2 years!), non-backwards compatible changes to widely used codes, libraries and languages. So I kind of give up! And so much software must be breaking - does not bode well for the dream of replicability of scientific results! I think maintaining backwards compatibility should be a requirement for scientific software development and funding.

However, it would be quite useful if you or others have time, need and interest in upgrading the codes, I am certainly available to assist with this process.

Thanks,
Anthony