hdf5/release_docs/RELEASE.txt

HDF5 version 1.9.52 currently under development
================================================================================


INTRODUCTION

This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.9.0 and
HDF5 1.9.x snapshot, and contains information on the platforms 
tested and known problems in HDF5-1.9.x. 
For more details check the HISTORY*.txt files in the HDF5 source.


Links to HDF5 1.9.x source code can be found on The HDF Group's 
development FTP server at the following location:
     ftp://ftp.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/pub/outgoing/hdf5/snapshots
User documentation for the snapshot can be accessed directly at this location: 
     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_dev_snapshot/H5_dev/

For more information, see the HDF5 home page:
   
    http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to the HDF Help Desk:

    help@hdfgroup.org


CONTENTS

- New Features
- Support for new platforms and languages
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.8.0
- Platforms Tested
- Known Problems


New Features
============

    Configuration:
    -------------
    - Added the xlc-* and mpcc_r-* BASENAME patterns to be recognized as IBM
      compilers so that the ibm compiler options can be added properly.  This
      allows non-system-default compiler command names (e.g. xlc-m.n.k.l) be
      recognized. AKC 2009/11/26.
    - Configuration suite now uses Automake 1.11 and Autoconf 2.64.
      MAM 2009/08/11.
    - Changed default Gnu fortran compiler from g95 to gfortran since
      gfortran is more likely installed with gcc now. -AKC 2009/07/19- 
    - Added libtool version numbers to generated c++, fortran, and 
      hl libraries. MAM 2009/04/19.
    - Regenerated Makefile.ins using Automake 1.10.2. MAM 2009/04/19.
    - Added a Make target of check-all-install to test the correctness of
      installing via the prefix= or $DESTDIR options. AKC - 2009/04/14
    - Configuration suite now uses Libtool 2.2.6a. MAM 2008/10/24

    - Configuration suite now uses Autoconf 2.61, Automake 1.10.1. 
      MAM 2008/05/05. 

    - The new configure option "--disable-sharedlib-rpath" disables
      embedding the '-Wl,-rpath' information into executables when
      shared libraries are produced, and instead solely relies on the
      information in LD_LIBRARY_PATH. (MAM - 2008/05/15)

    Library:
    --------
    - Added support for filtering densely stored groups.  Many of the API
      functions related to filters have been extended to support dense groups
      as well as datasets.  Pipeline messages can now be stored in a group's
      object header. (NAF/QAK - 2009/10/8)
    - The embedded library information is displayed by H5check_version() if a
      version mismatch is detected.  Also changed H5check_version() to
      suppress the warning message totally if $HDF5_DISABLE_VERSION_CHECK is 2
      or higher. (Old behavior treated 3 or higher the same as 1, that is
      print a warning and allows the program to continue. (AKC - 2009/9/28)
    - If a user does not care for the extra library information insert
      in the executables, he may turn it off by --disable-embedded-libinfo
      during configure. (AKC - 2009/9/15)
    - Corrected problem where library would re-write the superblock in a file
      opened for R/W access, even when no changes were made to the file.
      (QAK - 2009/08/20, Bz#1473)
    - Separated "factory" free list class from block free lists. These free
      lists are dynamically created and manage blocks of a fixed size.
      H5set_free_list_limits() will use the same settings specified for block
      free lists for factory free lists. (NAF - 2009/04/08)
    - Added support for dense attributes to H5Ocopy. (XCao/NAF - 2009/01/29)
    - Added H5Pset_elink_cb and H5Pget_elink_cb functions to support a
      user-defined callback function for external link traversal.
      (NAF - 2009/01/08)
    - Added H5Pset_elink_acc_flags and H5Pget_elink_acc_flags functions to
      allow the user to specify the file access flags used to open the target
      file of an external link. (NAF - 2009/01/08)
    - Added H5Pset_chunk_cache() and H5Pget_chunk_cache() functions to allow
      individual rdcc configuration for each dataset.  Added
      H5Dget_access_plist() function to retrieve a dataset access property
      list from a dataset. (NAF - 2008/11/12)
    - Added H5Iis_valid() function to check if an id is valid without producing
      an error message. (NAF - 2008/11/5)
    - Added two new public routines: H5Pget_elink_fapl() and
      H5Pset_elink_fapl(). (see bug #1247) (VC - 2008/10/13)
    - Improved free space tracking in file to be faster. (QAK - 2008/10/06)
    - Added 'mounted' field to H5G_info_t struct. (QAK - 2008/07/15)

    Parallel Library:
    -----------------
    - Modified parallel tests to run with arbitrary number of processes. The
      modified tests are testphdf5 (parallel dataset access), t_chunk_alloc 
      (chunk allocation), and t_posix_compliant (posix compliance). The rest of
      the parallel tests already use in the code the number of processes
      available in the communicator. (CMC - 2009/04/28) 

    Fortran Library:
    ----------------

        - Added for the C APIs the Fortran wrappers:
            h5dget_access_plist_f
            h5iis_valid_f
            h5pset_chunk_cache_f
            h5pget_chunk_cache_f 
          (MSB - 2009/04/17)


    C++ Library:
    ------------
        - These member functions were added as wrapper for H5Rdereference to
          replace the incorrect IdComponent::dereference().
                void H5Object::dereference(H5File& h5file, void* ref)
                void H5Object::dereference(H5Object& obj, void* ref)
          In addition, these constructors were added to create the associated
          objects by way of dereference:
                Attribute(H5Object& obj, void* ref);
                Attribute(H5File& file, void* ref);
                DataSet(H5Object& obj, void* ref);
                DataSet(H5File& file, void* ref);
                DataType(H5Object& obj, void* ref);
                DataType(H5File& file, void* ref);
                Group(H5Object& obj, void* ref);
                Group(H5File& obj, void* ref);
          (BMR - 2008/08/10)



    Tools:
    ------
     - h5diff: fix for displaying garbage value on LE machine for BE data.
	   (JKM - 2009/11/20)
     - h5dump subsetting now allows default for count. Also trailing ; in short form
       can be omitted after last specified value. (ADB - 2009/09/04)
     - h5dump/h5ls now can display data in region references 
       using new -R, --region flag.  (ADB - 2009/09/04)
     - h5diff new flag, -c, --compare, list objects that are not comparable.
        (PVN - 2009/4/10 - 1368)
     - h5diff new flag, -N, --nan, avoids NaNs detection. (PVN - 2009/4/10)
     - h5dump correctly specifies XML dtd / schema urls (ADB - 2009/4/3 - 1519)
     - h5repack now handles group creation order. (PVN - 2009/4/2 - 1402)
     - h5dump: added a printing of the compression ratio of uncompressed and compressed 
         sizes for cases where compression  filters are present. (PVN - 2008/05/01)
     - h5dump: added an option to allow a user defined formatting string for printf 
         regarding floating point numbers. (PVN - 2008/05/06)
     - h5dump: support for external links, display the object that the external link 
         points to. (PVN - 2008/05/12)
     - h5repack: add a userblock to an HDF5 file during the repack. (PVN - 2008/08/26)
     - h5repack: add 2 options that call H5Pset_alignment in the repacked file. (PVN - 2008/08/29)
     - h5ls: added capability to traverse through external links when the -r
         (recursive) flag is given. (NAF - 2008/09/16)
     - h5ls: added -E option to enable traversal of external links.  h5ls will
         not traverse external links without this flag being set.
         (NAF - 2008/10/06)
     - h5diff: added support for long double (PVN - 2008/10/28)
     - h5dump: binary output defaults to NATIVE with -b optionally accepting
            the form of binary output (NATIVE, FILE, BE, LE). (PVN - 2008/10/30)
     - h5diff: return 1 for file differences when both file graphs differ by any object. 
            Error return code was changed to 2 from -1. (PVN - 2008/10/30)
     - h5import: TEXTFPE (scientific format) was deprecated. Use TEXTFP 
            instead (PVN - 2008/10/30)
     - h5repack: When user doesn't specify a chunk size, h5repack now defines a default 
            chunk size as the same size of the size of the hyperslab used to read the chunks. 
            The size of the hyperslabs are defined as the size of each dimension or a 
            predefined constant, whatever is smaller. This assures that the chunk 
            read fits in the chunk cache. (PVN - 2008/11/21)
     - h5diff: h5diff treats two INFINITY values different. Fixed by checking  (value==expect) 
            before call ABS(...) at h5diff_array.c This will make that (INF==INF) is true 
            (INF is treated as an number instead of NaN) (PC -- 2009/07/28)
     - h5diff: add option "--use-system-epsilon" to print difference if (|a-b| > EPSILON)
            Change default to use strict equality (PC -- 2009/09/12)

    
    High-Level APIs:
    ------
     - Table: In version 3.0 of Table, "NROWS" (used to store number of records) was 
           deprecated (PVN - 2008/11/24)

    
    Documentation 
    ------------- 

Support for new platforms, languages and compilers.
=======================================
    - PathScale compilers are recognized and can build the HDF5 library
      properly. AKC - 2009/7/28 -

Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.8.0 release
==================================

    Library
    -------
      - Fixed a bug where writing and deleting many global heap objects (i.e.
            variable length data) would render the file unreadable.  Previously
            created files exhibiting this problem should now be readable.
            NAF - 2009/10/27 - 1483
      - Fixed incorrect return value for H5Pget_preserve. AKC - 2009/10/08 - 1628
      - Fixed an assertion failure that occurred when H5Ocopy was called on a
            dataset using a vlen inside a compound. (NAF - 2009/10/02 - 1597)
      - Fixed incorrect return value for H5Pget_filter_by_id1/2 in H5Ppublic.h.
            (NAF - 2009/09/25 - 1620)
      - Fixed a bug where properties weren't being compared with the registered
            compare callback. (NAF - 2009/09/25 - 1555)
      - Fixed a bug where H5Pget_fitler_by_id would succeed when called for a
            filter that wasn't present. (NAF - 2009/06/25 - 1250)
      - Fixed an issue with committed compound datatypes containing a vlen.
            Also fixed memory leaks involving committed datatypes.
            (NAF - 2009/06/10 - 1593)
      - Added versioning to H5Z_class_t struct to allow compatibility with 1.6
            API. (NAF - 2009/04/20 - 1533)
      - Fixed a problem with using data transforms with non-native types in the
            file. (NAF - 2009/04/20 - 1548)
      - Added direct.h include file to windows section of H5private.h 
            to fix _getcwd() warning. (ADB - 2009/04/14 - 1536)
      - Fixed a bug that prevented external links from working after calling
            H5close(). (NAF - 2009/04/10 - 1539)
      - Modified library to write cached symbol table information to the
            superblock, to allow library versions 1.3.0 to 1.6.3 to read files
            created by this version. (NAF - 2009/04/08 - 1423)
      - Changed skip lists to use a deterministic algorithm.  The library should
            now never call rand() or srand(). (NAF - 2009/04/08 - 503)
      - Fixed a bug where H5Lcopy and H5Lmove wouldn't create intermediate
            groups when that property was set. (NAF - 2009/04/07 - 1526)
      - Fixed a bug that caused files with a user block to grow by the size of
            the user block every time they were opened.
            (NAF - 2009/03/26 - 1499)
      - Fixed a rare problem that could occur with files using the old (pre 1.4)
            array datatype. (NAF - 2009/03/23)
      - Modified library to be able to open files with corrupt root group symbol
            table messages, and correct these errors if they are found.  Such
            files can only be successfully opened with write access.
            (NAF - 2009/03/23 - 1189)
      - Removed the long_long #define and replaced all instances with 
            "long long". This caused problems with third party products. All 
            currently supported compliers support the type. (ADB - 2009/03/05)
      - Fixed various bugs that could prevent the fill value from being written
            in certain rare cases. (NAF - 2009/02/26 - 1469)
      - Fixed a bug that prevented more than one dataset chunk from being cached
            at a time. (NAF - 2009/02/12 - 1015)
      - Fixed an assertion failure caused by opening an attribute multiple times
            through multiple file handles. (NAF - 2009/02/12 - 1420)
      - Fixed a problem that could prevent the user from adding attributes (or
            any object header message) in some circumstances.
            (NAF - 2009/02/12 - 1427)
      - Fixed a bug that could cause problems when an attribute was added to a
            committed datatype using the committed datatype's datatype.
            (NAF - 2009/02/12)
      - Fixed a bug that could cause problems when copying an object with a
            shared message in its own object header. (NAF - 2009/01/29)
      - Changed H5Tset_order to properly reject H5T_ORDER_NONE for most
            datatypes. (NAF - 2009/01/27 - 1443)
      - Fixed a bug where H5Tpack wouldn't remove trailing space from an
            otherwise packed compound type. (NAF - 2009/01/14)
      - Fixed up some old v2 btree assertions that get run in debug mode that
            were previously failing on compilation, and removed some of the 
            more heavily outdated and non-rewritable ones. (MAM - 2008/12/15)
      - Fixed a bug that could cause problems when "automatically" unmounting
            multiple files. (NAF - 2008/11/17)
      - H5Ovisit and H5Ovisit_by_name will now properly terminate when the
            callback function returns a positive value on the starting object.
            (NAF - 2008/11/03)
      - Fixed an error where a null message could be created that was larger
            than could be written to the file. (NAF - 2008/10/23)
      - Corrected error with family/split/multi VFD not updating driver info
            when "latest" version of the file format used. (QAK - 2008/10/14)
      - Corrected alignment+threshold errors to work correctly when metadata
            aggregation is enabled. (QAK - 2008/10/06)
      - Changed H5Fget_obj_count and H5Fget_obj_ids to ignore objects registered
            by the library for internal library use. (NAF - 2008/10/06)
      - Fixed potential memory leak during compound conversion.
            (NAF - 2008/10/06)
      - Changed the return value of H5Fget_obj_count from INT to SSIZE_T. Also
            changed the return value of H5Fget_obj_ids from HERR_T to SSIZE_T and
            the type of the parameter MAX_OBJS from INT to SIZE_T. (SLU - 2008/09/26) 
      - Fixed an issue that could cause data to be improperly overwritten
            during compound type conversion. (NAF - 2008/09/19)
      - Fixed pointer alignment violations that could occur during vlen
            conversion. (NAF - 2008/09/16)
      - Fixed problem where library could cause a segmentation fault when
            an invalid location ID was given to H5Giterate(). (QAK - 2008/08/19)
      - Fixed improper shutdown when objects have reference count > 1.  The
            library now tracks reference count due to the application separately
            from that due to internal library routines. (NAF - 2008/08/19)
      - Fixed assertion failure caused by incorrect array datatype version.
            (NAF - 2008/08/08)
      - Fixed an issue where mount point traversal would fail when using
            multiple handles for the child. (NAF - 2008/08/07)
      - Fixed an issue where mount points were inaccessible when using multiple
            file handles for the parent.  The mount table is now in the shared
            file structure (the parent pointer is still in the top structure).
            (NAF - 2008/08/07)
      - when an attribute was opened twice and data was written with one of the handles,
            the file didn't have the data.  It happened because each handle had its own
            object structure, and the empty one overwrote the data with fill value.  This is
            fixed by making some attribute information like the data be shared in the
            attribute structure.  SLU - 2008/07/22
      - Fixed issue where a group could have a file mounted on it twice.
            (QAK - 2008/07/15)
      - Fixed a Windows-specific issue in the ohdr test which was causing users
        in some timezones to get false errors.  This a deficiency in the Windows
        mktime() function, and has been handled properly.  SJW  - 2008/06/19
      - Fixed the problem with the searching of target file for H5Lcreate_external().
	    The searching pattern will depend on whether the target file's
	    pathname is an absolute or a relative path. Please see the description
	    in the RM for H5Lcreate_external().  (VC - 2008/04/08)
      - Fixed possible file corruption bug when encoding datatype
            descriptions for compound datatypes whose size was between
            256 & 511 bytes and the file was opened with the "use the
            latest format" property enabled (with H5Pset_libver_bounds).
            (QAK - 2008/03/13)
      - Fixed bug in H5Aget_num_attrs() routine to handle invalid location
            ID correctly.  (QAK - 2008/03/11)
      - H5Dset_extent: when shrinking dimensions, some chunks were not deleted.  
            (PVN - 2009/01/8)
      - Added code to maintain a min_clean_fraction in the metadata cache when
            in serial mode. (MAM - 2009/01/9)



    Configuration
    -------------
    - Removed the following config files, as we no longer support them:
        config/dec-osf*, config/hpux11.00, config/irix5.x, 
        config/powerpc-ibm-aix4.x config/rs6000-ibm-aix5.x config/unicos*
      MAM - 2009/10/08
    - Modified configure and make process to properly preserve user's CFLAGS
      (and company) environment variables. Build will now properly use
      automake's AM_CFLAGS for any compiler flags set by the configure
      process. Configure will no longer modify CFLAGS directly, nor will 
      setting CFLAGS during make completely replace what configure has set up.
      MAM - 2009/10/08
    - Support for TFLOPS, config/intel-osf1, is removed since the TFLOPS
      machine has long retired. AKC - 2009/10/06.
    - Added $(EXEEXT) extension to H5detect when it's executed in the 
      src/Makfile to generate H5Tinit.c so it works correctly on platforms 
      that require the full extension when running executables.
      MAM - 2009/10/01 - BZ #1613
    - Configure will now set FC and CXX to "no" when fortran and c++
      are not being compiled, respectively, so configure will not run
      some of the compiler tests for these languages when they are not
      being used. MAM - 2009/10/01
    - The PathScale compiler (v3.2) was mistaken as gcc v4.2.0 but it fails to
      recognize some gcc options. Fixed. (see bug 1301). AKC - 2009/7/28 -
    - The --enable-static-exec flag will now properly place the -static flag
      on the link line of all installed executables. This will force the
      executable to link with static libraries over shared libraries, provided
      the static libraries are available. MAM - 2009/08/31 - BZ #1583
    - The --includedir=DIR configuration option now works as intended, and can
      be used to specify the location to install C header files. The default
      location remains unchanged, residing at ${prefix}/include. 
      MAM - 2009/03/10 - BZ #1381
    - Configure no longer removes the '-g' flag from CFLAGS when in production
      mode if it has been explicitly set in the CFLAGS environment variable 
      prior to configuration. MAM - 2009/03/09 - BZ #1401.
    - Fixed error with 'make check install' failing due to h5dump
      needing other tools built first. MAM - 2008/10/24.
    - When using shared szip, it is no longer necessary to specify
      the path to the shared szip libraries in LD_LIBRARY_PATH. MAM - 
      2008/10/24.
    - The file libhdf5_fortran.settings is not installed since its content
      is included in libhdf5.settings now. AKC - 2008/10/21
    - "make DESTDIR=xxx install" failed to install some tools and files
      (e.g., h5cc and fortran modules). Fixed. AKC - 2008/10/8.

    Performance
    -------------
      - perf_serial test added to Windows projects and check batch file. 
        (ADB - 2009/06/11)

    Tools
    -----
        - h5dump/h5ls display buffer resize fixed in tools library.  
            (ADB - 2009/07/21 - 1520)
        - Fixed many problems that could occur when using h5repack with named
            datatypes. (NAF - 2009/4/20 - 1516/1466)
        - h5dump, h5diff, h5repack were not reading (by hyperslabs) datasets 
            that have a datatype datum size greater than H5TOOLS_BUFSIZE, a 
            constant defined as 1024Kb, such as array types with large 
            dimensions (PVN - 2009/4/1 - 1501)
        - h5import: By selecting a compression type, a big endian byte order was being 
            selected (PVN - 2009/3/11 - 1462)
        - zip_perf.c had missing argument on one of the open() calls. Fixed.
            (AKC - 2008/12/9)
        - h5dump now checks for uniqueness of committed datatypes.
            (NAF - 2008/10/15)
        - Fixed unnecessary indentation of committed datatypes in h5dump.
            (NAF - 2008/10/15)
	- Fixed bugs in h5stat:segmemtation fault when printing groups and
          print warning message when traversal of objects is unsuccessful.
          (see bug #1253) (VC- 2008/10/13)
        - Fixed bug in h5ls that prevented relative group listings (like
            "h5ls foo.h5/bar") from working correctly (QAK - 2008/06/03)
        - Fixed bug in h5diff that prevented datasets & attributes with
            variable-length string elements from comparing correctly.
            (QAK - 2008/02/28)
        - h5import bug on Windows w/binary datasets. fread in windows needs a
            binary file to be open with 'rb' instead of 'r' otherwise it
            terminates execution if an end of file character is found on the
            input file. Besides that the binary file generated needs to be open
            with 'wb' , otherwise an end of line character is read twice.
            (PVN - 2008/02/19)
        - Fixed bug in h5dump that caused binary output to be made only for the first 
           dataset, when several datasets were requested. (PVN - 2008/04/07)
        - h5dump: when doing binary output (-b), the stdout printing of attributes 
           was done incorrectly. Removed printing of attributes when doing binary 
           output. PVN - 2008/06/05

    High-Level APIs:
     ------
      - Fixed a bug where the H5TB API would forget the order of fields when
          added out of offset order. (NAF - 2009/10/27 - 1582)
      - H5DSis_attached failed to account for different platform types. Added a
          get native type call. (ADB - 2009/9/29 - 1562)
      - Dimension scales: The scale index return value in H5DSiterate_scales was not always 
          incremented. (PVN - 2009/4/8 - 1538)

    Fortran High-Level APIs:
     ------
      - Lite: The h5ltget_dataset_info_f function (gets information about a dataset) 
           was not correctly returning the dimension array. (PVN - 2009/3/23)
      - Lite: the h5ltread_dataset_string_f and h5ltget_attribute_string_f functions 
           had memory problems with the g95 fortran compiler. (PVN <20> 5/13/2009) 1522






    Documentation 
    ------------- 


    F90 APIs
    --------


    C++ APIs
    --------
        - Fixed bug that caused segfaults in Attribute::read. (BMR - 2008/04/20)
        - Fixed bug in PropList::getClassName to use portable HDfree instead
            of free. (BMR - 2008/04/20)
        - Fixed a design bug which allowed an Attribute object to create/modify
          attributes (bugzilla #1068).  The API class hierarchy was revised
          to address the problem.  Classes AbstractDS and Attribute are moved
          out of H5Object.  Class Attribute now multiply inherits from
          IdComponent and AbstractDs and class DataSet from H5Object and
          AbstractDs.  In addition, the data member IdComponent::id was
          moved into subclasses: Attribute, DataSet, DataSpace, DataType,
          H5File, Group, and PropList. (BMR - 2008/08/10)
        - IdComponent::dereference was incorrect and replaced as described
          in "New Features" section.
          (BMR - 2008/08/10)



Platforms Tested
================

    AIX 5.3                       xlc 7.0.0.8, 8.0.0.20, 9.0.0.4
    (LLNL Up)                     xlC 7.0.0.8, 8.0.0.20, 9.0.0.4
                                  xlf 9.1.0.8, 10.1.0.9, 11.1.0.7
                                  mpcc_r 7.0.0.8
                                  mpxlf_r 09.01.0000.0008
    FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE i386       gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
    (duty)                        g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
                                  gcc 4.2.1 20080123
                                  g++ 4.2.1 20080123
                                  gfortran 4.2.1 20070620
    FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE amd64      gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
    (liberty)                     g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
                                  gcc 4.2.1 20080123
                                  g++ 4.2.1 20080123
                                  gfortran 4.2.1 20080123

    Linux 2.6.9 (RHEL4)           Intel 10.0 compilers
    (abe.ncsa.uiuc.edu)
    Linux 2.4.21-47               gcc 3.2.3 20030502
    (osage)
    Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10           gcc 3.4.6 20060404
    (kagiso)                      PGI 7.0-7 (pgcc, pgf90, pgCC)
                                  Intel 9.1 (icc, ifort, icpc)
    Linux 2.6.16.27 x86_64 AMD    gcc 4.1.0 (SuSE Linux), g++ 4.1.0, g95 (GCC 4.0.3)
    (smirom)                      PGI 6.2-5 (pgcc, pgf90, pgCC)
                         	  Intel 9.1 (icc, iort, icpc)
    Linux 2.6.5-7.252.1-rtgfx #1 
          SMP ia64                Intel(R) C++ Version 9.0
    (cobalt)                      Intel(R) Fortran Itanium(R) Version 9.0 
                                  SGI MPI
    SunOS 5.10                    Sun C 5.9 SunOS_sparc 
                                  Patch 124867-11 2009/04/30
    (linew)                       Sun Fortran 95 8.3 SunOS_sparc 
                                  Patch 127000-11 2009/10/06
                                  Sun C++ 5.9 SunOS_sparc 
                                  Patch 124863-16 2009/09/15
    IA-64 Linux 2.4.21.SuSE_292.til1 ia64
    (NCSA tg-login)               gcc 3.2.2
                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 8.1
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 8.1
				  mpich-gm-1.2.5..10-intel-r2
    Windows XP                    
				  Visual Studio .NET
                                  Visual Studio 2005 w/ Intel Fortran 9.1
                                  Cygwin(native gcc compiler and g95)
				  MinGW(native gcc compiler and g95)
    Windows XP x64                
			          Visual Studio 2005 w/ Intel Fortran 9.1
    Windows Vista			
			          Visual Studio 2005

    MAC OS  10.5 (Intel)          gcc i686-apple-darwin8-gcc-4.0.1 (GCC) 4.0.1 
                                  G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.91!) Nov 21 2006)
                                  GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.3.0 20070810
    Alpha Open VMS 7.3


Supported Configuration Features Summary
========================================

    In the tables below
          y   = tested and supported
          n   = not supported or not tested in this release
          x   = not working in this release
          ( ) = footnote appears below second table
          <blank> = testing incomplete on this feature or platform
          W or C indicates workstation or cluster, respectively.

Platform                          C        F90    F90      C++   zlib  SZIP
                                  parallel        parallel
SunOS5.10 64-bit                   n        y      n        y     y     y
SunOS5.10 32-bit                   n        y      n        y     y     y
AIX-5.2  32-bit                    y        y      y        y     y     y
AIX-5.2  64-bit                    y        y      y        y     y     y
Cray XT3 (not tested
          for this release)        n        n      n        n     n     n
Windows XP                         n        y(3)   n(3)     y     y     y
Windows XP x64                     n        y(3)   n(3)     y     y     y
Windows Vista                      n        n      n        y     y     y
Mac OS X 10.5 Intel                n        y      n        y     y     y
FreeBSD 6.2 32-bit                 n        n      n        y     y     y
FreeBSD 6.2 64-bit
RedHat EL4 2.6.9 i686 GNU        W y(2)     y(4)   y(2)     y     y     y
RedHat EL4 2.6.9 i686 Intel      W n        y      n        y     y     n
RedHat EL4 2.6.9 i686 PGI        W n        y      n        y     y     n
SuSe Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 GNU (5) W y(2)     y      n        y     y     y
SuSe Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 Int (5) W n        y      n        y     n     n
SuSe Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 PGI (5) W n        y      n        y     n     n
RHL9 Linux 2.4 Xeon Lustre Intel C n        y      n        y     y     n
RHEL3 Linux 2.4 Xeon Intel       W n        y      n        n     y     n
RHEL4 Linux 2.6 Xeon Lustre Int  C n        y      n        y     y     n
SuSE Linux 2.4 ia64 Intel        C y(1)     y      y        y     y     y
SuSe Linux 2.6.5
       SGI Altix ia64 Intel      C n        y      n        y     n     y
Alpha OpenVMS 7.3.2                n        y      n        y     n     n



Platform                          Shared   Shared    Shared    static-  Thread-
                                  C libs   F90 libs  C++ libs  exec     safe
SunOS 5.10 32-bit                   y        y         y         x        y
SunOS 5.10 64-bit                   y        y         y         x        y
AIX-5.2 32-bit                      n        n         n         x        n
AIX-5.2 64-bit                      n        n         n         x        n
Cray XT3 (not tested
          for this release)         n        n         n         x        n
Windows XP                          y        y(3)      y         y        y
Windows XP x64                      y        y(3)      y         y        y
Windows Vista                       y        n         n         y        y
Mac OS X 10.5 Intel                 y        y         y         x        n
FreeBSD 6.2 32-bit                  y        y         y         x        n
FreeBSD 6.2 64-bit                  y        y         y         x        n
RHEL4 2.6.9 i686 GNU              W y        y(4)      y         x        y
RHEL4 2.6.9 i686 Intel            W y        y         y         x        n
RHEL4 2.6.9 i686 PGI              W y        y         y         x        n
SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 GNU (5)  W y        y         y         x        y
SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 Intel(5) W y        y         y         x        n
SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 PGI(5)   W y        y         y         x        n
RHL9 Linux 2.4 Xeon Lustre Intel  C y        y         y         x        n
RHEL3 Linux 2.4 Xeon Intel        W y        n         n         x        n
RHEL4 Linux 2.6 Xeon Lustre Intel C y        y         y         x        n
SuSE Linux 2.4 ia64 Intel         C y        y         y         x        n
SuSe Linux 2.6.5
           SGI Altix ia64 Intel   C n        n         n         x        n

    Notes: (1)  Using mpich 1.2.6.
           (2) Using mpich2 1.0.6.
           (3) Using Visual Studio 2005 or Cygwin
           (4) With PGI and Absoft compilers.
           (5) AMD Opteron x86_64
    Compiler versions for each platform are listed in the preceding
    "Platforms Tested" table.



Known Problems
==============
* Parallel mode in AIX will fail some of the testcheck_version.sh tests where
  it treats "exit(134) the same as if process 0 had received an abort signal.
  This is fixed and will be available in the next release. AKC - 2009/11/3

* Some tests in tools/h5repack may fail in AIX systems when -q32 mode is used.
  The error is due to insufficient memory requested. Request a large amount
  of runtime memory by setting the following environment variable for more
  memory.
     LDR_CNTRL=MAXDATA=0x20000000@DSA
  AKC - 2009/10/31

* The PathScale MPI implementation, accessing a Panasas file system, would
  cause H5Fcreate() with H5F_ACC_EXCL to fail even when the file is not
  existing. This is due to the MPI_File_open() call failing if the amode has
  the MPI_MODE_EXCL bit set. (See bug 1468 for details.) AKC - 2009/8/11
 
* Parallel tests failed with 16 processes with data inconsistency at testphdf5
  / dataset_readAll. Parallel tests also failed with 32 and 64 processes with
  collective abort of all ranks at t_posix_compliant / allwrite_allread_blocks
  with MPI IO. (CMC - 2009/04/28)

* For SNL, spirit/liberty/thunderbird: The serial tests pass but parallel
  tests failed with MPI-IO file locking message. AKC - 2007/6/25.
* On Intel 64 Linux cluster (RH 4, Linux 2.6.9) with Intel 10.0 compilers use
  -mp -O1 compilation flags to build the libraries. Higher level of optimization 
  causes failures in several HDF5 library tests. 
* For HPUX 11.23 many tools tests failed for 64-bit version when linked to the
  shared libraries (tested for 1.8.0-beta2)
* For SNL, Red Storm: only paralle HDF5 is supported.  The serial tests pass
  and the parallel tests also pass with lots of non-fatal error messages.
* on SUN 5.10 C++ test fails in the "Testing Shared Datatypes with Attributes" test 
* configuring with --enable-debug=all produces compiler errors on most
  platforms.  Users who want to run HDF5 in debug mode should use
  --enable-debug rather than --enable-debug=all to enable debugging
  information on most modules.
* On Mac OS 10.4, test/dt_arith.c has some errors in conversion from long
  double to (unsigned) long long and from (unsigned)long long to long double. 
* On Altix SGI with Intel 9.0 testmeta.c would not compile with -O3
  optimization flag.
* On VAX, Scaleoffset filter isn't supported. The filter cannot be applied to
  HDF5 data generated on VAX. Scaleoffset filter only supports IEEE standard
  for floating-point data.
* On Cray X1, a lone colon on the command line of h5dump --xml (as in
  the testh5dumpxml.sh script) is misinterpereted by the operating system
  and causes an error.
* On mpich 1.2.5 and 1.2.6, we found that if more than two processes
  contribute no IO and the application asks to do IO with collective, we found
  that when using 4 processors, a simple collective write will be hung
  sometimes. This can be verified with t_mpi test under testpar.
* The dataset created or rewritten with the v1.6.3 library or after can't 
  be read with the v1.6.2 library or before when Fletcher32 EDC(filter) is 
  enabled.  There was a bug in the calculating code of the Fletcher32 
  checksum in the library before v1.6.3.  The checksum value wasn't consistent 
  between big-endian and little-endian systems.  This bug was fixed in 
  Release 1.6.3.  However, after fixing the bug, the checksum value is no 
  longer the same as before on little-endian system.  The library release 
  after 1.6.4 can still read the dataset created or rewritten with the library
  of v1.6.2 or before.  SLU - 2005/6/30
* For the version 6(6.02 and 6.04) of Portland Group compiler on AMD Opteron
  processor, there's a bug in the compiler for optimization(-O2).  The library
  failed in several tests but all related to multi driver.  The problem has 
  been reported to the vendor.  
* On IBM AIX systems, parallel HDF5 mode will fail some tests with error
  messages like "INFO: 0031-XXX ...".  This is from the command poe.
  Set the environment variable MP_INFOLEVEL to 0 to minimize the messages
  and run the tests again.
  The tests may fail with messages like "The socket name is already
  in use".  HDF5 does not use sockets (except for stream-VFD).  This is
  due to problems of the poe command trying to set up the debug socket.
  Check if there are many old /tmp/s.pedb.* staying around.  These are
  sockets used by the poe command and left behind due to failed commands.
  Ask your system administrator to clean them out.  Lastly, request IBM
  to provide a mean to run poe without the debug socket.

* The C++ library's tests fails when compiling with PGI C++ compiler.  The
  workaround until the problem is correctly handled is to use the 
  flag "--instantiate=local" prior to the configure and build steps, as:
        setenv CXX "pgCC --instantiate=local"  for pgCC 5.02 and higher


* The stream-vfd test uses ip port 10007 for testing. If another
  application is already using that port address, the test will hang
  indefinitely and has to be terminated by the kill command. To try the
  test again, change the port address in test/stream_test.c to one not
  being used in the host.

* The --enable-static-exec configure flag will only statically link libraries
  if the static version of that library is present. If only the shared version
  of a library exists (i.e., most system libraries on Solaris, AIX, and Mac,
  for example, only have shared versions), the flag should still result in a 
  successful compilation, but note that the installed executables will not be 
  fully static. Thus, the only guarantee on these systems is that the 
  executable is statically linked with just the HDF5 library.

* With the gcc 2.95.2 compiler, HDF 5 uses the `-ansi' flag during
  compilation. The ANSI version of the compiler complains about not being
  able to handle the `long long' datatype with the warning:

        warning: ANSI C does not support `long long'
  
  This warning is innocuous and can be safely ignored.

* Certain platforms give false negatives when testing h5ls:
    - Cray J90 and Cray T90IEEE give errors during testing when displaying
      some floating-point values. These are benign differences due to
      the different precision in the values displayed and h5ls appears to
      be dumping floating-point numbers correctly.

* Not all platforms behave correctly with szip's shared libraries. Szip is
  disabled in these cases, and a message is relayed at configure time. Static
  libraries should be working on all systems that support szip, and should be
  used when shared libraries are unavailable. There is also a configure error
  on Altix machines that incorrectly reports when a version of szip without
  an encoder is being used.

* On some platforms that use Intel and Absoft compilers to build HDF5 fortran library,
  compilation may fail for fortranlib_test.f90, fflush1.f90 and fflush2.f90
  complaining about exit subroutine. Comment out the line 
  IF (total_error .ne. 0) CALL exit (total_error)

* Information about building with PGI and Intel compilers is available in
  INSTALL file sections 5.7 and 5.8

* On at least one system, (SDSC DataStar), the scheduler (in this case
  LoadLeveler) sends job status updates to standard error when you run 
  any executable that was compiled with the parallel compilers.

  This causes problems when running "make check" on parallel builds, as 
  many of the tool tests function by saving the output from test runs,
  and comparing it to an exemplar.  

  The best solution is to reconfigure the target system so it no longer
  inserts the extra text.  However, this may not be practical.

  In such cases, one solution is to "setenv HDF5_Make_Ignore yes" prior to 
  the configure and build.  This will cause "make check" to continue after 
  detecting errors in the tool tests.  However, in the case of SDSC DataStar,
  it also leaves you with some 150 "failed" tests to examine by hand.

  A second solution is to write a script to run serial tests and filter
  out the text added by the scheduler.  A sample script used on SDSC
  DataStar is given below, but you will probably have to customize it 
  for your installation.  

  Observe that the basic idea is to insert the script as the first item 
  on the command line which executes the the test.  The script then 
  executes the test and filters out the offending text before passing
  it on.

        #!/bin/csh

        set STDOUT_FILE=~/bin/serial_filter.stdout
        set STDERR_FILE=~/bin/serial_filter.stderr

        rm -f $STDOUT_FILE $STDERR_FILE

        ($* > $STDOUT_FILE) >& $STDERR_FILE

	set RETURN_VALUE=$status

        cat $STDOUT_FILE

        tail +3 $STDERR_FILE

	exit $RETURN_VALUE

  You get the HDF make files and test scipts to execute your filter script
  by setting the environment variable "RUNSERIAL" to the full path of the 
  script prior to running configure for parallel builds.  Remember to 
  "unsetenv RUNSERIAL" before running configure for a serial build.

  Note that the RUNSERIAL environment variable exists so that we can 
  can prefix serial runs as necessary on the target system.  On DataStar,
  no prefix is necessary.  However on an MPICH system, the prefix might
  have to be set to something like "/usr/local/mpi/bin/mpirun -np 1" to
  get the serial tests to run at all.

  In such cases, you will have to include the regular prefix in your
  filter script.

* H5Ocopy() does not copy reg_ref attributes correctly when shared-message
  is turn on. The value of the reference in the destination attriubte is
  wrong. This H5Ocopy problem will affect h5copy tool