Updating Guide from Salvus 2025.1.x to Salvus 2026.x

Versioning

Starting with 2026.5.0, Salvus uses date-based version numbers of the form YYYY.M.P, where YYYY is the year, M is the month of the release (not zero-padded), and P is the patch level. For example, 2026.5.0 is the initial May 2026 release, and 2026.5.1 would be a subsequent patch to that release.

This replaces the previous YYYY.N.P scheme (e.g. 2025.1.x), where N was a sequential release counter rather than a calendar month. The new scheme makes it immediately clear when a version was released and simplifies planning around Salvus updates.

Backwards compatibility is ensured between releases unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Users Who Should not Update (yet)

Both, Salvus API and SalvusProject remain fully compatible when transitioning from Salvus 2025.1.x to Salvus 2026.x.

However, we have updated the minimum requirements for some of Salvus' first-level Python dependencies such as numpy>=2.2.0 or sqlalchemy>2.0. In case you cannot update these packages, we recommend continuing with the maintenance release 2025.1.3.

Updating Guide

Nothing special needs to be done for the SalvusCompute binaries. Just running the Mondaic downloader will update them.

The Python installation requires a bit more work, as, starting with Salvus 2026.5, Salvus now requires Numpy version >=2.2 and SQLAlchemy > 2.0. Therefore, we strongly recommend creating a new Python environment for Salvus 2026.X and backing up the old one:

Copy
mamba create --name salvus_backup --clone salvus
mamba remove --name salvus --all

Once this is done, please follow the usual installation instructions to set up a new environment.

Required Python Code Changes

Salvus' Python API remains compatible between Salvus 2025.1.x and Salvus 2026.5.0, but a couple of functions have been flagged for depreciation in a future release.