Open Source¶

We encourage any users who have modified (or would like to modify) VIC, either to fix bugs or develop new features, to contact us and coordinate development work with us. The VIC model source code is archived in Git and is publicly available through GitHub. To access the source code, visit GitHub, create an account, and visit github.com/UW-Hydro/VIC. The routing model will soon be added to the archive as well.

VIC is an open source development model and is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 (GPL).

Instructions for using Git and GitHub to access the VIC code and contribute changes are here:

• Working with VIC in the git version control system

Model Development¶

Information about the VIC codebase:

• Current Versions of VIC and Routing Model
  • Main features
  • Known issues
  • Differences with previous versions
  • Backwards-compatibility with previous versions
• Previous Model Versions
• Contributing

All development activity is coordinated via the VIC github page, where you can also find all archived, current, beta, and development versions of the model.

Release Naming Convention¶

Beginning with the release of VIC 4.2, a release naming convention of VIC.MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH has been formally adopted. This naming system was introduced by Semantic Versioning and defined as:

1. MAJOR version: when changes are included that are not backward compatible,
2. MINOR version: when features and new functionality are added in a backwards-compatible manner, and
3. PATCH version: when backwards-compatible bug fixes are made.