Filter support has three goals:
1. Use the existing HDF5 filter implementations,
2. Allow filter metadata to be stored in the NumCodecs metadata format used by Zarr,
3. Allow filters to be used even when HDF5 is disabled
Detailed usage directions are define in docs/filters.md.
For now, the existing filter API is left in place. So filters
are defined using ''nc_def_var_filter'' using the HDF5 style
where the id and parameters are unsigned integers.
This is a big change since filters affect many parts of the code.
In the following, the terms "compressor" and "filter" and "codec" are generally
used synonomously.
### Filter-Related Changes:
* In order to support dynamic loading of shared filter libraries, a new library was added in the libncpoco directory; it helps to isolate dynamic loading across multiple platforms.
* Provide a json parsing library for use by plugins; this is created by merging libdispatch/ncjson.c with include/ncjson.h.
* Add a new _Codecs attribute to allow clients to see what codecs are being used; let ncdump -s print it out.
* Provide special headers to help support compilation of HDF5 filters when HDF5 is not enabled: netcdf_filter_hdf5_build.h and netcdf_filter_build.h.
* Add a number of new test to test the new nczarr filters.
* Let ncgen parse _Codecs attribute, although it is ignored.
### Plugin directory changes:
* Add support for the Blosc compressor; this is essential because it is the most common compressor used in Zarr datasets. This also necessitated adding a CMake FindBlosc.cmake file
* Add NCZarr support for the big-four filters provided by HDF5: shuffle, fletcher32, deflate (zlib), and szip
* Add a Codec defaulter (see docs/filters.md) for the big four filters.
* Make plugins work with windows by properly adding __declspec declaration.
### Misc. Non-Filter Changes
* Replace most uses of USE_NETCDF4 (deprecated) with USE_HDF5.
* Improve support for caching
* More fixes for path conversion code
* Fix misc. memory leaks
* Add new utility -- ncdump/ncpathcvt -- that does more or less the same thing as cygpath.
* Add a number of new test to test the non-filter fixes.
* Update the parsers
* Convert most instances of '#ifdef _MSC_VER' to '#ifdef _WIN32'
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/1836
Revert the internal filter code to simplify it. From the user's
point of view, the only visible changes should be:
1. The functions that convert text to filter specs have had their signature reverted and have been moved to netcdf_aux.h
2. Some filter API functions now return NC_ENOFILTER when inquiry is made about some filter.
Internally,the dispatch table has been modified to get rid of the filter_actions
entry and associated complex structures. It has been replaced with
inq_var_filter_ids and inq_var_filter_info entries and the dispatch table
version has been bumped to 3. Corresponding NOOP and NOTNC4 functions
were added to libdispatch/dnotnc4.c. Also, the filter_action entries
in dispatch tables were replaced for all dispatch code bases (HDF5, DAP2,
etc). This should only impact UDF users.
In the process, it became clear that the form of the filters
field in NC_VAR_INFO_T was format dependent, so I converted it to
be of type void* and pushed its management into the various dispatch
code bases. Specifically libhdf5 and libnczarr now manage the filters
field in their own way.
The auxilliary functions for parsing textual filter specifications
were moved to netcdf_aux.h and were renamed to the following:
* ncaux_h5filterspec_parse
* ncaux_h5filterspec_parselist
* ncaux_h5filterspec_free
* ncaux_h5filter_fix8
Misc. Other Changes:
1. Document NUG/filters.md updated to reflect the changes above.
2. All the old data types (structs and enums)
used by filter_actions actions were deleted.
The exception is the NC_H5_Filterspec because it is needed
by ncaux_h5filterspec_parselist.
3. Clientside filters were removed -- another enhancement
for which no-one ever asked.
4. The ability to remove filters was itself removed.
5. Some functionality needed by nczarr was moved from libhdf5
to libsrc4 e.g. nc4_find_default_chunksizes
6. All the filterx code was removed
7. ncfilter.h and nc4filter.c no longer used
Misc. Unrelated Changes:
1. The nczarr_test makefile clean was leaving some directories; so
add clean-local to take care of them.
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/1584
Support has been added for multiple filters per variable. This
affects a number of components in netcdf. The new APIs are
documented in NUG/filters.md.
The primary changes are:
* A set of new functions are provided (see __include/netcdf_filter.h__).
- Obtain a list of the filters associated with a variable
- Obtain the parameters for a specific filter.
* The existing __nc_inq_var_filter__ function now returns info
about the first defined filter.
* The utilities (ncgen, ncdump, and nccopy) now support
an extended format for specifying a sequence of filters.
The general form is __<filter>|<filter>..._.
* The ncdump **_Filter** attribute now dumps a list of all the
filters associated with a variable using the above new format.
* Filter specifications can now use a filter name instead of number
for filters known to the netcdf library, which in turn is taken
from the HDF5 filter registration page.
* New errors are defined: NC_EFILTER and NC_ENOFILTER. The latter
is returned if an attempt is made to access an unknown filter.
* Internally, the dispatch table has been extended to add a function
to handle all of the filter functions.
* New, filter-related, tests were added to nc_test4.
* A new plugin was added to the plugins directory to help with testing.
Notes:
1. The shuffle and fletcher32 filters are not part of the multifilter system.
Misc. changes:
1. A debug module was added to libhdf5 to help catch error locations.
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/972
The current szip plugin code in the HDF5 library has some
unexpected behaviors that require some changes to how
nc_inq_var_szip is implemented and to the corresponding tests:
nc_test4/{test_szip,tst_vars3}.
Specifically, the following can happen:
1. The number of parameters provided by the user will be two,
but the number of parameters returned by nc_inq_var_filter
will be four because the HDF5 code (H5Zszip) will add two
extra parameters for internal use. It turns out that the two
parameters provided when calling nc_def_var_filter correspond
to the first two parameters of the four parameters returned
by nc_inq_var_filter.
2. The nc_inq_var_szip values corresponding to the ones provided
by the caller may be different than those provided by
nc_def_var_filter. The value of the options_mask argument is
known to add additional flag bits, and the pixels_per_block
parameter may be modified.
The in-memory files can be made persistent if nc_create is called with
NC_DISKLESS|NC_WRITE flags set. Initial test case also included.
- Modified ncio mechanism to support
multiple ncio packages; this is so we
can have posixio and memio operating
at the same time.
- cleanup up a bunch of lint issues (unused variables, etc).
