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.

The changes will take place on Wednesday 21 November 2018 11:00 - 11:30 UTC

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

The next defaults are tagged as "nov18" in modules. After the session the previous defaults will be tagged as "old"

Highlights

A number of bug fixes and performance improvements have been introduced on the different versions to become default. Here are some of the most relevant new features:

Magics and Metview now use ecCodes to decode BUFR data.
New automatic contouring setting for Magics and Metview to match ECCHARTS styles.
BUFR decoding performance has been enhanced in ecCodes, and support for a number or new parameters in GRIB have been added.
ecflowUI, the new graphical client for ecFlow, comes with a number of improvements and bug fixes.

How to use the new versions for testing BEFORE the update

Users are strongly encouraged to test their software applications and data processing chain with the new versions of the various software packages before the date of the change to the default versions.

The new versions of the software packages can be selected by using the nov18 tag in modules. For example:

module swap metview/nov18

module load Magics/nov18

module load emos/nov18

module swap eccodes/nov18

How to revert to the old versions in case of problems AFTER the update

Users 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 load emos/old

module swap eccodes/old

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.

Version changes

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

Package	Default version		Release notes	Download page
Package	Before	After	Release notes	Download page
CodesUI	1.0.0	1.2.1	CodesUI - Change History	CodesUI - Releases
ecCodes	2.7.3	2.9.2	Latest news	ecCodes Releases
ecFlow	4.9.0	4.11.1	Latest news	ecFlow Releases
ECFS user documentation	2.2.4	2.2.5	-	-
ecmp	1.0.0	1.0.2	Release Notes	-
Magics	3.0.4	3.2.2	Latest News	Magics Releases
Metview	5.0.3	5.2.3	Change History	Metview Releases Metview Bundle
ODB API	0.17.6	0.18.0	Change history	ODB API Releases
ODB	1.0.8	1.0.10	-	-

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
Package	Before	After	Release notes	Download page
EMOSLIB	4.5.5	4.5.8	History of EMOSLIB changes	EMOSLIB Releases
GRIB-API	1.26.1	1.27.0	Latest news	GRIB-API Releases

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

Verify (and metpy tagged as metpy/verify) will be discontinued. Please use quaver instead.

Table of contents

Highlights

How to use the new versions for testing BEFORE the update

How to revert to the old versions in case of problems AFTER the update

Version changes