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This week saw the May 2017 release of the standard ECMWF software packages. This month's release brings for ecCodes contributions from MeteoFrance, the latest WMO tables, new GRIB parameters and improvements in the high-level Pythonic interface. There are smaller incremental updates on ODB_API, Magics and Metview.

Reminder: Starting with the November 2016 release all packages now use ecCodes as their default library to decode/encode GRIB data, instead of GRIB_API. While we are confident that ecCodes is to a high degree backwards compatible with GRIB_API, we strongly recommend good testing before using the software in your operational environments. In case you prefer to continue using GRIB_API for now, we provide a minor update release of this package, but recommend that you move to ecCodes eventually, since new features will only be implemented in ecCodes.

Metview is built at ECMWF with all the versions of our libraries listed in the table below, and all are included in the May 2017 Metview Bundle.

In the early 1990s, Metview's user interface was developed using the Motif toolkit. It allowed the development of a user interface that worked across different UNIX systems and gave users easy access to Metview's powerful tools for data access, visualisation and manipulation. But with Motif becoming less well supported, a new user interface based on the Qt framework was developed, the first versions becoming available for testing in 2014. By the start of 2015 this had matured enough to become the default user interface for version 4.5.0 of Metview. This has allowed, for instance, Metview to run on Mac OS X. Although the Motif user interface is no longer being built for installations at ECMWF, the source code is still part of Metview and external installers can still choose to build the Motif interface.

With Metview version 5.0, available later this year, the Motif code will be removed from Metview, making it a lighter package and reducing the maintenance work of its developers. The removal of the Motif code is one of the main triggers for increasing the major version number from 4 to 5 - this version will also bring various improvements and new features rather than radical changes.

Metview's Qt-based user interface brings ease of use and additional features

In a similar vein, the Motif-based ecflowview is starting to be replaced with the Qt-based ecFlowUI. This development is not yet as mature as the Metview user interface, and we won't be removing ecflowview until ecFlowUI has been well-established as its successor. But in the meantime, users are reaping the benefits of its multi-threaded approach to server communication, its more user-friendly interface and powerful search tools.

EcFlow's Qt-based interface provides a better user experience, and is still under active development

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.

Please help us improve the support provided for ECMWF software packages by completing our

ECMWF Software Survey 2016

If you know someone else who might be interested in providing feedback please do not hesitate to forward the survey link.

If you only use a few ECMWF packages on one platform it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to complete. The survey will be open until 13 January 2017 . All answers provided will be treated in confidence and used in aggregated statistical format only. No personal data will be divulged.

Results from previous surveys are available in Confluence, where a survey report on MARS has just been added.

Thank you for your time and input!

Umberto Modigliani

Head User Support

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.

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.

This 4.5-day training course was held at ECMWF from 26-30th September 2016. Participants learned how to use Metview to access, analyse, manipulate and visualise meteorological data through a series of lectures and tutorials. This work included familiarisation with Metview's core functionalities such as retrieving and filtering data from the MARS archive, working with observation data and producing geographical and other plots such as cross sections. These skills were then cemented through the use of case studies, including a session on working with ensemble data.

The training material can be found here.

All these packages use the same build system based on CMake - simplifying and harmonising the installation experience. These versions are available on all ECMWF computer systems through the module system and labelled as "new" versions. If you encounter any issues please feel free to send feedback to Software.Support@ecmwf.int.

All these packages use the same build system based on CMake - simplifying and harmonising the installation experience. They are also part of the latest Metview bundle. 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.

We are happy to announce the June 2016 release of the standard ECMWF software packages. This month the biggest update comes from GRIB-API adding support for the UERRA project.

This release is the first one which allows Emoslib, Magics and Metview to be built optionally with ecCodes instead of GRIB-API (for GRIB handling only).  To do so you have to add the option

-DENABLE_ECCODES=ON

to your cmake invocation. Also if ecCodes is not installed in the standard place, you can point to it via

-DECCODES_PATH=/path/to/eccodes/install

We strongly recommend you use version 0.16.0 of ecCodes for this. Please note that ecCodes is still in beta, and care needs to be taken when GRIB-API and ecCodes are installed on the same system because binaries with the same name are installed. Any feedback on the use of ecCodes is welcome.

All these packages use the same build system based on CMake - simplifying and harmonising the installation experience. They are also part of the latest Metview bundle. 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.