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: issue https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/1156
Starting with HDF5 version 1.10.x, the plugin code MUST be
careful when using the standard *malloc()*, *realloc()*, and
*free()* function.
In the event that the code is allocating, reallocating, or
free'ing memory that either came from -- or will be exported to --
the calling HDF5 library, then one MUST use the corresponding
HDF5 functions *H5allocate_memory()*, *H5resize_memory()*,
*H5free_memory()* [5] to avoid memory failures.
Additionally, if your filter code leaks memory, then the HDF5 library
generates a failure something like this.
````
H5MM.c:232: H5MM_final_sanity_check: Assertion `0 == H5MM_curr_alloc_bytes_s' failed.
````
This PR modifies the code in the plugins directory to
conform to these new requirements.
This raises a question about the libhdf5 code where this
same problem may occur. We need to scan especially nc4hdf.c
to look for this problem.
I took Ed's advice and moved the plugin stuff to its own
top-level directory. This is an attempt to solve the problem of
copying files that we have experienced. In any case, it will
serve as a place to stick additional plugins.
