It is necessary to create a symbolic link from the GeneralUtilities base folder to the folder that will contain your data. This symbolic linked folder will be called DataDir. The following describes how to make a symbolic link (https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-create-symbolic-links-in-linux-using-the-ln-command/)
We also recommend creating a folder with all of your python projects and adding this to your .bashrc file. The details can be found here (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3402168/permanently-add-a-directory-to-pythonpath)
Data used in these projects can be automatically downloaded from the GeneralUtilities/Data/Download folder. master_download.py will download run all the download scripts and store them in the DataDir.
If you use conda to manage your packages, it is recommended to create a new environment when using this code. Details on how to do that can be found here (https://conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/tasks/manage-environments.html#creating-an-environment-with-commands). Then the following will need to be installed:
conda install ipython
conda install -c conda-forge cartopy
conda install requests
conda install scipy
conda install -c conda-forge geopy
conda install netCDF4
conda install -c conda-forge gsw