5.91 Beta Release (August 2025)
eWater is pleased to announce that all projects and libraries within Source have been successfully migrated from .NET Framework 4.8 to .NET 8.0. This upgrade marks a key milestone in enhancing performance, security, and maintainability. The changes in this beta will also be available in the next Source production release, due out in October.
This beta includes the following changes:
Upgraded Source to .NET 8.0, including core code, frameworks, and community plugins.
A fix to an issue with intermittent duplicate headers in the Log Reporter UI.
An additional validation to monthly pattern import for Minimum Flow node, Bypass flow of Farm Dam node, Demand model monthly pattern, Function Manager pattern variable and several cases of monthly pattern import for forecasted evaporation.
Upgrade to .Net 8.0
eWater has been working on a major technology upgrade to migrate Source from the unsupported .Net Framework 4.8 to .NET 8.0. This upgrade ensures that the majority of technologies used in Source are in the current version and actively supported by their vendor.
The upgrade impacts all areas of the Source platform, including the core code, 170 third-party libraries, custom plugins and associated projects. Given this, we strongly recommend testing your Source models in this beta.
Please note that from October, all maintenance, bug fixes and enhancements to Source will be to the .NET 8.0 version.
Pre-Requisites for using this BETA
Before testing, please review the prerequisite documentation to ensure a smooth experience with this version:
‘One-Time Database Engine’ Upgrade
Upon loading a Source project created in an earlier version of Source, users will see a progress screen “Performing One-Time Database Engine”. This is required to upgrade the internal project database to the newer version of the technology. After saving the project in Source v5.91 or later, this screen will not be seen again for the project.
Plugin Developers Will Need to Migrate Their Plugins to .Net 8.0
As this change is fundamental to the .Net and C# environment used in Source, plugins also need to be upgraded to use .Net 8.0.
eWater has upgraded all Community Plugins. We can provide advice if required for any external plugin developers, contact us at support@ewater.org.au.
Many Community Plugins Now Have An Additional “UI” component
Part of the technology change has required the User Interface aspects of plugins to be separated into a separate DLL file.
The following list of new “UI” Community Plugins that are required to be loaded.
e.g. If your project uses ‘SourcePlugin.SubSource.dll’ then ‘SourcePlugin.SubSource.UI.dll’ should also be loaded.
AARS.UI.dll
CompareFlow.UI.dll
CSIRO.RiverMurrayDSS.UI.dll
CustomDayAggregator.UI.dll
DERMTools.UI.dll
FlowAdjustment.UI.dll
GR4JSG.UI.dll
HydroclimateTransformation.UI.dll
HydroclimateTransformation.UI.dll.config
IQQMNetworkConverter.UI.dll
NodePartitionChecker.UI.dll
ReefHydroCalModels.UI.dll
SourcePlugin.AllocationAndUtilities.UI.dll
SourcePlugin.CSIRO.DSedNet.UI.dll
SourcePlugin.DataSourcesTools.UI.dll
SourcePlugin.DataSourcesTools.UI.dll.config
SourcePlugin.NetLPMonthlyOptimiser.UI.dll
SourcePlugin.Scripting.UI.dll
SourcePlugin.StorageFillingCurveMethod.UI.dll
SourcePlugin.SubModelForecast.UI.dll
SourcePlugin.SubSource.UI.dll
SourcePlugin.SWAT.UI.dll
SourcePlugin.SWATCustomAutoAssignInputs.UI.dll
Limited Results Changes
Testing indicated that the majority of Source projects produced the same results in Source v5.91 as in prior versions.
However, a handful of projects did produce small differences due to the way newer versions of .Net parse strings.
An example of this is the value 4.513701089 in a CSV, which will be parsed in .NET 8 as 4.513701089 but in .NET Framework as 4.5137010889999996
For technical details see: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/floating-point-parsing-and-formatting-improvements-in-net-core-3-0/
Regression Testing
There is no tolerance in our regression test suite to allow for early identification of results being different on different machines or versions of operating systems.
Full Release Documentation