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We are happy to announce we  versions the December versions of the standard ECMWF software packages. This month's release featured mostly incremental updates to our packages. As announced, this is the very last release of GRIB_API. The only major change is to Magics, where internally the Boost code was replaced, reducing the dependencies of the library and speeding up the compilation of the library. While much testing has been done and much care been taken, there might be still some impact on the contouring. Please let us know if you might see any regressions. ecCodes saw many smaller improvements, especially for the performance of BUFR handling. Metview offers new We encourage users to migrate to ecCodes.

The default set of tests in ecCodes do not require downloading of data anymore. We are aware that many maintainers/packagers of ecCodes did not run tests to avoid these downloads. Please enable the tests again, they are vital to ensure ecCodes has been installed properly. Anyone developing/changing code in ecCodes should run the extended set of tests which requires the data download, but exercises the ecCodes functionality more thoroughly. This release contains the latest WMO BUFR tables (November update) with ecCodes and Emoslib/BUFRDC.

Metview offers a large selection of layers and automatic styles based on the ecCharts web map service via its new ecCharts icon.

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Metview now offers the ecCharts layers and styles (left), which are searchable and previewed in the icon editor (right).

Python 3 interface for ecCodes

We at ECMWF have prepared With ecCodes 2.10.0, we prepared a beta version of the long awaited Python codes to version 3 for 20193 interface to the ecCodes API. While the migration of  to Python 3 of many other packages has been done, ecCodes has had proved more challenging. We have been aware of the existence of the Debian/Ubuntu patches for a while. Unfortunately, these patches only addressed issues with regard to importing ecCodes under Python 3 but do not actually enable the programs to run.
This matter is now one of our top priorities for our developments. The main challenge has been that the underlying file I/O has radically changed with Python 3, therefore we need needed to rewrite some of the underlying code. This will require required careful testing to ensure no regression in functionality (includes including the Python 2 installations). We try to minimise the impact to users and their programs, but some minor changes to client code might be necessary. We will give more guidance when we provide a version for Python 3.  required by Python 3 itself are needed. When opening any BUFR or GRIB files please ensure this happens in binary mode, like this:

f = open("myfields.grib", "rb")

This change in your programs will also work in Python 2. We are also aware of issues if GRIB/BUFR files are reopened in the same programs and will investigate this issue. We would like to thank everyone who expressed an interest , and will make sure that you will be informed as soon as we can provide a Python 3 versionand support. Thank you for your patience. Anyone interested in a higher level Python 3 interface to read GRIB data into xarray, should have a look at cfgrib. Please test this Python3 interface carefully and provide us with feedback.

All these packages use the same build system based on CMake - simplifying and harmonising the installation experience. The versions are available on all ECMWF computer systems as "new" versions. If you encounter any issues please feel free to send feedback to Software.Support@ecmwf.int.