DRAFT - December 2018 software release

We are happy to announce we  versions of the standard ECMWF software packages. This month's release featured mostly incremental updates to our packages. 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 automatic styles based on the ecCharts web map service.

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

Python 3 interface for ecCodes

We at ECMWF have prepared the long awaited Python codes to version 3 for 2019. While the migration of many packages has been done, ecCodes has 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 to rewrite some of the underlying code. This will require careful testing to ensure no regression in functionality (includes 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.  

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 version. Thank you for your patience.

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.