Overview of the Workflow

The release process typically follows this progression:

  1. Planning Package Updates

  2. Creating Release Candidates

  3. Deployment and Testing

  4. Adding a New Machine

  5. Finalizing the Release

  6. Maintaining Past Versionse

We begin with some background information, then each of these steps is detailed in its own page. See below for a high-level summary.

Backgraound: How Conda and Spack Work Together in Polaris

Why does E3SM-Unified use both Conda and Spack? What roles do they each serve? Before you start, it’s critical to understand how these two systems work together.

πŸ”— Read more

1. Planning Package Updates

Updates are driven by the needs of the E3SM community, typically discussed via Confluence or GitHub. This step documents how to propose new packages or changes to existing ones.

πŸ”— Read more

2. Creating Release Candidates

This step covers:

  • Making RCs for core tools (e.g., E3SM Diags, MPAS-Analysis, zppy)

  • Building an e3sm-unified RC

πŸ”— Read more

3. Deploying and Testing on HPCs

Before full deployment, release candidates are installed on a subset of HPC platforms for iterative testing and validation. This stage often requires updating updating mache to support new systems or changes in machine configurations, adding package versions to E3SM’s Spack fork, and troubleshooting deployment scripts.

Testing includes everything from basic imports to full zppy workflows. This is a collaborative effort, with the full iterative process often spanning several weeks to a few months.

πŸ”— Read more

4. Adding a New Machine

Most of the work for adding a new machine takes place in mache. Here we provide notes on adding new HPCs that are specific to E3SM-Unified.

πŸ”— Read more

5. Finalizing the Release

Once all RCs pass testing:

  • Make final releases of all dependencies

  • Publish the final E3SM-Unified conda package

  • Deploy across all supported HPC machines

  • Announce the release to the community

πŸ”— Read more

6. Maintaining Past Versions

Older versions of E3SM-Unified sometimes require maintenance (repairs or deletion).

πŸ”— Read more