Scale offset pack

[mo-marqh]

new demonstration code of netCDF scale+offset packing using XIOS in-built functionality

[mo-marqh]

there are some interesting facets here, it's worth checking out the code and having a look at the output file

different tools have different levels of awareness, by design, so an ncdump of the output file will show a variable of type short with integer values and metadata attributes defining a scale_factor and add_offset, as defined in the XIOS XML:
https://github.com/MetOffice/tcd-XIOS-demonstration/pull/15/files#diff-069187adc21ab09db30167612038510675baba4c7e4c33f2a048f0b10a7281b5R21

reading in the file with netcdf4python:
https://github.com/MetOffice/tcd-XIOS-demonstration/pull/15/files#diff-e84aaa3e4c21c186a5938c66cd4238b2b864d7259121ff57306dae204f806623R44
automagically recognises this configuration and provides an array in memory of floating point values, unpacked from the integers to the encoded precision

[harry-shepherd]

Hi Mark, this looks good - I have just one comment:

I think there needs to be an __init__.py file in packing_scale_offset, to allow the test to be discoverable.

[mo-marqh]

related to #16 (only addressing part of these requirements)

Hi Mark, this looks good - I have just one comment:

I think there needs to be an __init__.py file in packing_scale_offset, to allow the test to be discoverable.

yikes
yes indeed, all the tests passed as the new one wasn't discovered /o\