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THIS PAGE IS STILL A DRAFT. NOT PUBLICLY AVAILABLE YET

ECMWF is updating the default versions of its software packages and libraries used across all user platforms at the centre as part of the regular update cycle.

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titleWhen?

The changes will take place on  5 June 2019 10:00 - 10:30 UTC

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Info
titleDo I need to do anything?

We strongly recommend you test that your programs, scripts and suites work with the new versions of any software or library affected before the change happens.

In particular, if using ecFlow, please make sure you check the triggers in your suites are well defined as described below.

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With the upcoming Implementation of IFS cycle 46R146r1, this set of defaults is ready to handle the data produced, including all the new parameters introduced in this cycle.

Default GNU compiler updated

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A more complete Python 3 deployment has been made, with all major ECMWF packages supporting it: Magics, Metview, ecFlow and ecCodes (in beta). We encourage all Python users to start migrating their programs to Python 3, as the official support support for Python 2 will cease at the end of 2019. Please have a look at the Migration to Python 3 documentation page for more details on how to do this migration.

Metview new features

The new Metview 5.5 features a new set of thermodynamic functions and lots of new functionality for the Geopoints format.  It also uses the new interpolation package MIR by default, replacing the old EMOSLIB interpolation library.

See the Magics and Metview latest news for a more detailed list of changes.

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Once a year we take the opportunity to update not only the software we develop at ECMWF, but also the core 3rd party packages and libraries in our software stack. Amongst the affected packages we can find popular tools and libraries like Python, R,  cdo or netCDF 4. See below for the complete list.

Discontinuation of old PGI compilers

Up to now, we have been providing our software libraries built with a legacy PGI 14 compiler for the FORTRAN parts of the code. This helped with the migration from older platforms to new ones where our default compiler of choice has been the GNU GCC. The new versions becoming default now are no longer available for the PGI environment on those platforms where it is present. If you still use it, please consider moving to the default environment. Note that older versions of our software stack will still be available for a bit longer in case you cannot migrate immediately.

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Please let ECMWF know if you need to revert to the old version of any of the packages after the update of the defaults has taken place. 

Ecflow change: possible impact after upgrading

This release corrects some faulty triggers expression, that may require validation:

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  •  If you use python to generate your suite definitions, then simple make sure you run(defs.check())

    module load ecflow/ new
    ...
    # build your python suite definitions
    def = ...
    print defs.check()  #  this will print any problems with triggers and inlimit


  • Alternatively you can use:

    module swap ecflow/ 4.12.0
    ecflow_client --get > tmp.def
    ecflow_client --load tmp.def check_only #  this will print any problems with triggers and inlimit


If you have migrated to the new release, to check all your suites run:

module load ecflow/ 4.12.0
ecflow_client --check=_all_   #  this will print any problems with triggers and inlimits

You have all the details in the ecflow release 4.12.0.

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This table summarises the changes in the version of the different packages:



Note

ecCodes is now the official ECMWF encoder and decoder for GRIB and BUFR formats. It supersedes GRIB-API, for the GRIB format, and EMOSLIB, for the BUFR. If you still use any of those, we encourage you to migrate to ecCodes.


PackageDefault versionRelease notesDownload page
BeforeAfter
EMOSLIB4.5.84.6.1History of EMOSLIB changesEMOSLIB Releases

Please see the Release notes for full details of the changes implemented in each package.

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Note

Some of the versions in this list may already be the default for a specific package on a certain platform, so no changes will be made in those cases. After the update, all platforms will have the same defaults for all these packages.