GrADS 2.0.a0

[黄平]

Jennifer Adams£¬
Hi,
Since the version 1.9, the MS Windows builds of GrADS was not released. Do you have plan to release the MS Windows builds of GrADS 2.0? Thanks.

Huang Ping
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======== 2008-01-26 00:37:44 ========

At long last, GrADS 2.0.a0 is released! ?/font>


Because NCEP will soon be distributing forecast data only in GRIB2 format, we are releasing an alpha version of GrADS 2.0. We are still actively testing and debugging and documenting the code, but it is working well for us internally at COLA, and we feel the time is right for a public release.?/font>


GrADS 2.0 is a significant upgrade from 1.9 in many ways:?/div>
-- it has 'dtype grib2' and a new utility 'grib2scan'?/font>
-- it has a fifth dimension for gridded data sets?/font>
-- internal data handling is all double precision?/font>
-- undef handling is cleaner
-- the netcdf/hdf interface has been streamlined?/font>
-- the executable names are different:?/div>
   ??gradsc, gradsnc, and gradshdf are merged into 'grads'
   ??gradsdods is now 'gradsdap'


Because of these changes, and others that are still in the works but haven't been implemented yet, there are some features which we can no longer support. The UDF interface is disabled, but will be return soon in a new implementation that should be easier to use. The lterp() function (a widely used UDF) is now built-in. The LATS interface is gone, but implementing a new path for writing out netcdf with 'gxout fwrite' is very high on our to-do list. Templating with the 'sdfopen' command is also no longer supported, and some special cases of binary file formats are now a legacy: "var" and "z" transposed data (units=-1,1) and "x" and "y" transposed data (units=-1,30). The format of the GrADS metafile will also change, as graphics improvements are implemented. The gv utility will not work with GrADS 2.0. Otherwise, for now, everything you do with GrADS should work in version 2.?/font>


I have posted the source code and two binary tarballs in:
   ?a href="ftp://iges.org/grads/2.0/">ftp://iges.org/grads/2.0/
Binaries are for RedHatEnterpriseLinux5 (x86_64) and Intel Macs. If you are using GrADS on a unix platform of a different flavor, I highly recommend trying to build from source, since I will be posting updates to the source code very frequently. A list of the required supplemental libraries is in the documentation at http://iges.org/grads/gadoc/supplibs.html . Almost all of these supplibs are upgrades from previous versions and build easily. I will update this doc page with additional guidance for building from source as soon as I can.?/font>


To get you started with NCEP GRIB2, I have also posted a couple of sample descriptor files:?/font>
   http://iges.org/grads/gadoc/gfs.ctl
   http://iges.org/grads/gadoc/gfsens.ctl
The documentation on descriptor file elements ( http://iges.org/grads/gadoc/descriptorfile.html )has been updated with information on the EDEF entry and GRIB2 handling.?/div>


Please post comments and questions and bug reports here. As always, I must be able to reproduce a problem on my own systems in order to fix it, so keep that in mind when reporting bugs.?/font>


Jennifer


--
Jennifer M. Adams
IGES/COLA
4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302
Calverton, MD 20705
jma at cola.iges.org
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