Notice: as of 30 June 2022, DTC has ceased all activities supporting the HWRF Developer community.
HWRF Repository Checks
DTC: Consistency Checks
The purpose of these tests is to confirm that ongoing code development that is not meant to alter the HWRF answer indeed does not change it. To that effect, a HWRF forecast is run with the most recent HWRF code and compared against results from the merged code (new development and/or updates from the community trunk). Identical results are expected unless code changes intended for HWRF were committed. Should the solutions differ when not expected, the code can be stepped back through individual commits to determine exactly which commit is responsible for the change.
The output of the runs will be compared against the baseline HWRF code for all steps of the end-to-end (for the current system, the outputs of the following programs are compared: WPS, prep_hybrid, real, vortex initialization, GSI, merge, WRF, UPP, and tracker).
Developers: Compliance Checks
It is expected that developers will test the code in their personal branches before committing to branches/HWRF. Those tests will address the scientific soundness of the development and the robustness of the code. Developments that do not change the answer of the HWRF operational configuration (because changes are added as namelist options) will require less rigourous testing. Developments that change the answer of the HWRF reference configuration will go through a larger compliance test. These tests should follow EMC procedures for HWRF code development where individual upgrades are tested for a suitable number of cases before taking them into consideration for potential inclusion in the annual upgrade process.
Once satisfied with the expected outcome, developers will commit their upgrades to branches/HWRF, after getting approval from the HWRF developers committee. These tests are responsibility of the developers and DTC will facilitate and support them. It is also recommended that developers repeat a smaller version of the test after their results are added to branches/HWRF. If the commit was successful, the results of those two tests should be identical.
Forecast Improvement Tests
The tests described here do not measure forecast improvement. They are intended solely to ascertain the integrity of code for inclusion in the code repository. Testing for operational implementation follows a rigorous procedure determined by EMC, and not covered here.
