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 6 October 2021 09:00 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
  • TEMS


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.

Table of contents

Highlights

Software stack ready for next operational IFS cycle

With the upcoming Implementation of IFS Cycle 47r3, this set of defaults is ready to handle the data produced, including all the new parameters introduced in this cycle.

ECMWF software improvements

See the blog posts for the latest two software releases to learn about what is new in some of our own software packages and libraries such as ecCodes, Magics or Metview.

All the new versions come with a number of bug fixes and improvements. You may see the changelogs for any individual package or library in the list below if you want to have all the details.

Quaver moves to version 2 by default

Version 2 is a major upgrade of Quaver concentrating changes in the underlying software packages, preprocessing of input data and settings of internal algorithms which cause changes in the score values. Quaver 2 for the first time in the history of Verify and Quaver breaks the backward compatibility of score values computed by the previous versions of Quaver and Verify. Scores computed by Quaver 1 and Quaver 2 cannot be mixed; in particular, for research experiments and o-suite/e-suite scores comparison these must be computed by the same major version of Quaver.

See the Quaver 2 migration page for more details. If you need to continue to use version 1, please make sure you load quaver with:

module load quaver/1

The existing running qsuites will not be affected by the change.

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 oct21 tag in modules. For example:

module swap metview/oct21
module load Magics/oct21
module swap eccodes/oct21

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 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


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.

Change list

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

PackageDefault versionNotesDownload page
BeforeAfter
BUFRDC4.6.44.6.5

No changes to the library, just updated BUFR tables

-
CodesUI1.5.11.5.4CodesUI - Change HistoryCodesUI - Releases
ecCodes2.21.02.23.0

Latest news

ecCodes Releases
ecFlow4.17.2

4.17.2

no change

Latest news

ecFlow Releases
ecFlow/55.6.35.7.0

Latest news

ecFlow Releases
Magics

4.6.0

4.9.3Latest NewsMagics Releases
Metview5.11.15.13.2

Change History

Metview Releases
Metview Bundle
ODC1.3.0

1.4.1

--
ODB API0.19.5

0.19.5

no change

Change historyODB API Release
Quaver1.4.6.4

2.0.8.1

See the Quaver 2 migration page.
Quaver/1 users should load it by
module load quaver/1

-
ECMWF toolbox

2021.03.1.0

2021.08.0.0


Only available on Atos Systems-
CDO

1.9.10

1.9.10-01


Same CDO version, with updated ecCodes 2.23.0-


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.

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