Hi all,
I wanted to update this thread. The above method of 'git checkout remotes/origin/maint-5.8' did not work for me past the create_newcase stage due to incompatibilities with my run configurations. I ended up adding the porting functionality manually by adding the derecho settings to the config_batch.xml, config_compilers.xml, and config_machines.xml scripts. To find the changes, you can look at the git log files in an updated version of cime and search derecho. You should be able to port from there. One issue I ran into was I had to include a header file in one of the c files my case used because the c compiler is different in Cheyenne and Derecho. I have been able to successfully port to derecho and run an CESM case on an SE grid with reanalysis nudging.