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Typically, we try to draw out our upgrade cycle to minimize the disruption to our users’ software and workflows. In this case, CentOS was purchased and sponsored by a large corporation that uses the same software as the basis for a paid Linux distribution. This company made a suprise surprise announcement to terminate the lifecycle early, causing a major disruption for those who deployed it before the surprise in late 2020. The resulting fallout provides an object lesson in the challenges in enforcing open-source licenses.
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- The newer operating system will provide a new application binary interface (ABI) as well as supporting libraries. This might cause compatibility problems if you have inflexible or unforseen unforeseen dependencies on system-level libraries. We expect this to be rare.
- Our new software tree may have newer compilers and MPI implementations.
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If upgrading the middleware affects the correctness of your software, then this can be a useful prompt to identify sensitivity or find bugs. In the ideal case, our supporting software and middleware has no systematic effect on your results or conclusions. If you find that they do, or you want some help understanding the best practices for verification and validation, please schedule a consultation with us so we can learn more about your workflow.
Otherwise, we hope to minmize minimize any disruption to your research by making it easy to make small changes to stay current with the latest research software libraries, either by submitting your workflows to us in advance, or performing some comparisons during the transition period. After the upgrade, every user should be able to understand and document their software dependencies so their research codes can lead a long, productive life.
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