  CUBES (Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph) is the recently approved
high-efficiency VLT spectrograph aimed to observe the sky in the UV
ground-based region (305-400 nm) with a high-resolution mode (~20K) and a
low-resolution mode (~5K). In this paper we will briefly describe the
requirements and the design of the several software packages involved in the
project, namely the instrument control software, the exposure time calculator,
the end-to-end simulator, and the data reduction software suite. We will
discuss how the above mentioned blocks cooperate to build up a "software
ecosystem" for the CUBES instrument, and to support the users from the proposal
preparation to the science-grade data products.
