How to incorporate binary or ascii data files into the Phantom repo

If your setup or module relies on external data files (e.g. an ascii table) to function, these files need to be distributed with Phantom in order for your modules to be portable.

Small files

For very small files (under 1Mb), you can simply add these to the git repository in a subdirectory of the phantom/data directory:

$ cd phantom/data
$ ls
README          forcing/        galaxy_merger/      isolatedgalaxy/     star_data_files/
eos/            gal_radii_cdfs/     galcen/         neutronstar/        velfield/

To use the datafile in your code, say from a file called ‘mydata.txt’ which is stored in the subdirectory ‘star_data_files/red_giant/’, you should use the find_phantom_datafile routine from the datafile module to retrieve the file:

#!fortran
use datafiles, only:find_phantom_datafile
character(len=120) :: filename
...

filename=find_phantom_datafile('mydata.txt','star_data_files/red_giant')

This routine searches for the file first in the current directory, followed by the phantom/data directory once the PHANTOM_DIR environment variable is specified, e.g.:

$ export PHANTOM_DIR=~/phantom
$ ./phantomsetup

Large files

For large data files, the procedure is as follows:

  1. Do NOT add the file to the git repository. Instead, place a README file in the directory where the file belongs and add this to the git repository:

git add data/star_data_files/red_giant/README
git commit -m 'placeholder for mydata.txt' data/star_data_files/red_giant/README

  1. Add the name of the file to the .gitignore file in the root-level phantom directory

  2. Then, send your file to daniel.price@monash.edu (e.g. via Dropbox) to store on the phantom website

  3. Implement the call in the code as previously using the find_phantom_datafile routine. This will automatically retrieve the file from the web into your phantom/data directory at runtime (using wget). Alternatively you can manually place the file in the appropriate folder