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.
When?
The changes will take place on 22 May 2018 10:00 - 10:30 UTC
What platforms are affected?
All user platforms at the centre will see their default additional software stack updated:
- All clusters in our High Performance Computing Facility, mainly CCA and CCB
- ECGATE
- Linux Clusters
- Linux Desktops
Table of contents
Highlights
Software stack ready for next operational IFS cycle
With the upcoming Implementation of IFS cycle 45r1, this set of defaults is ready to handle the data produced, including all the new parameters introduced in this cycle
Magics 3 and Metview 5
Both Magics and Metview see their major version updated.
Magics comes with some improvements on the visualisation of NetCDF-CF and colour setting gradients, and support for Python 3.
Metview 5 will benefit from the new features of Magics 3, plus interesting features such as a new interactive layer management, per-colour transparency and FLEXPART support, among others.
See the Magics and Metview latest news for a more detailed list of changes.
CodesUI first stable release
CodesUI is an interactive graphical application built on ecCodes to inspect GRIB and BUFR messages, that has now reached the first public release.
Consolidation of main third-party software package defaults across all platforms
The default versions for other third party software and libraries have historically diverged in the different platforms at the centre. We will take this opportunity to converge our defaults to the same versions across all those platforms, so we can offer a more consistent environment and user experience. Amongst the affected packages we can find popular tools and libraries like Python, R, cdo or netCDF 4. See below for the complete list.
How to use the new versions for testing BEFORE the update
The new versions of the software packages can be selected by using the may18 tag in modules. For example:
module swap metview/may18 module load Magics/may18 module swap eccodes/may18 module swap python/may18
How to revert to the old versions in case of problems AFTER the updateUsers that experience problems with the new default software packages after the update of 10 May will be able to revert to the old default versions. These can be selected with the commands:
module swap metview/old module load Magics/old module swap eccodes/old module swap python/old
Change list
ECMWF Software
This table summarises the changes in the version of the different packages:
| Package | Default version | Release notes | Download page | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before | After | |||
| CodesUI | 0.9.8 | 1.0.0 | CodesUI - Change History | CodesUI - Releases |
| ecCodes | 2.5.0 | 2.7.3 | ecCodes Releases | |
| ecFlow | 4.7.1 | 4.9.0 | ecFlow Releases | |
| Magics | 2.34.3 | 3.0.3 | Latest News | Magics Releases |
| Metview | 4.9.0 | 5.0.2 | Metview Releases Metview Bundle | |
| ODB | 1.0.3 | 1.0.8 | - | - |
| ODB API | 0.17.3 | 0.17.6 | Change history | ODB API Release |
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.
| Package | Default version | Release notes | Download page | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before | After | |||
| EMOSLIB | 4.5.2 | 4.5.5 | History of EMOSLIB changes | EMOSLIB Releases |
| GRIB-API | 1.24.0 | 1.26.1 | GRIB-API Releases | |
Please see the Release notes for full details of the changes implemented in each package.
Third-party software
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.