diff --git a/MPI/lammps/2019/variants b/MPI/lammps/2019/variants
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fc31b8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/MPI/lammps/2019/variants
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+lammps/2019.8_merlin6  stable    gcc/8.3.0 openmpi/3.1.4_merlin6
diff --git a/MPI/lammps/build b/MPI/lammps/build
index f83b881..6df1224 100755
--- a/MPI/lammps/build
+++ b/MPI/lammps/build
@@ -1,7 +1,10 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env modbuild
 
+# get mappings for our version numbers to the published tarfile names
+TARNAME=$(grep -E "^${V_MAJOR}.${V_MINOR}" files/version-to-tarname.txt| awk '{print $2}')
+
 # pbuild::set_download_url "https://gitlab.psi.ch/caubet_m/merlin-software/raw/master/$P/$P-${V_PKG}.tar.gz"
-pbuild::set_download_url "https://github.com/lammps/lammps/archive/patch_15Nov2018.tar.gz"
+pbuild::set_download_url "https://github.com/lammps/lammps/archive/${TARNAME}"
 
 pbuild::add_to_group 'MPI'
 
diff --git a/MPI/lammps/files/version-to-tarname.txt b/MPI/lammps/files/version-to-tarname.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a901f75
--- /dev/null
+++ b/MPI/lammps/files/version-to-tarname.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+2018.11      patch_15Nov2018.tar.gz
+2019.8       stable_7Aug2019.tar.gz