The netcdf-c code has to deal with a variety of platforms:
Windows, OSX, Linux, Cygwin, MSYS, etc. These platforms differ
significantly in the kind of file paths that they accept. So in
order to handle this, I have created a set of replacements for
the most common file system operations such as _open_ or _fopen_
or _access_ to manage the file path differences correctly.
A more limited version of this idea was already implemented via
the ncwinpath.h and dwinpath.c code. So this can be viewed as a
replacement for that code. And in path in many cases, the only
change that was required was to replace '#include <ncwinpath.h>'
with '#include <ncpathmgt.h>' and then replace file operation
calls with the NCxxx equivalent from ncpathmgr.h Note that
recently, the ncwinpath.h was renamed ncpathmgmt.h, so this pull
request should not require dealing with winpath.
The heart of the change is include/ncpathmgmt.h, which provides
alternate operations such as NCfopen or NCaccess and which properly
parse and rebuild path arguments to work for the platform on which
the code is executing. This mostly matters for Windows because of the
way that it uses backslash and drive letters, as compared to *nix*.
One important feature is that the user can do string manipulations
on a file path without having to worry too much about the platform
because the path management code will properly handle most mixed cases.
So one can for example concatenate a path suffix that uses forward
slashes to a Windows path and have it work correctly.
The conversion code is in libdispatch/dpathmgr.c, and the
important function there is NCpathcvt which does the proper
conversions to the local path format.
As a rule, most code should just replace their file operations with
the corresponding NCxxx ones defined in include/ncpathmgmt.h. These
NCxxx functions all call NCpathcvt on their path arguments before
executing the actual file operation.
In some rare cases, the client may need to directly use NCpathcvt,
but this should be avoided as much as possible. If there is a need
for supporting a new file operation not already in ncpathmgmt.h, then
use the code in dpathmgr.c as a template. Also please notify Unidata
so we can include it as a formal part or our supported operations.
Also, if you see an operation in the library that is not using the
NCxxx form, then please submit an issue so we can fix it.
Misc. Changes:
* Clean up the utf8 testing code; it is impossible to get some
tests to work under windows using shell scripts; the args do
not pass as utf8 but as some other encoding.
* Added an extra utf8 test case: test_unicode_path.sh
* Add a true test for HDF5 1.10.6 or later because as noted in
PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/1794,
HDF5 changed its Windows file path handling.
The primary fix is to improve CMake build support.
Specific changes include:
* CMake: Provide a better soln to locating the AWS SDK
libraries; the new way is the preferred method as described in
the aws-cpp-sdk documentation.
* CMake (and Automake): allow -DENABLE_S3_SDK (default off) to suppress
looking for AWS libraries.
* CMake: add the complete set of nczarr tests
* CMake: add EXTERNL as needed to various .h files.
* Improve support for windows drive letters in paths.
* Add nczarr and s3 flags to nc-config
* For VisualStudio X nczarr, cleanup the NAN+INFINITY handling
* Convert _MSC_VER -> _WIN32 and vice versa as needed
* NCZarr - support multiple platform paths including windows, cygwin.
mingw, etc.
* NCZarr - sort the test outputs because different platforms
produce directory contents in different orders.
One big change concerns netcdf-c/CMakeLists.txt and netcdf-c/configure.ac.
In the current versions, it was the case that --disable-hdf5
disabled netcdf-4 (libsrc4). With nczarr, this can no longer
be the case because nczarr requires libsrc4 even if libhdf5
is disabled. So, I modified the above files to move the
format options (HDF5, NCZarr, HDF4, etc) to a single place
near the front of the files. Now it is the case that:
* Enabling any of the formats that require libsrc4
also does an implicit --enable-netcdf4.
* --disable-netcdf4 | --disable-netcdf-4 now becomes
and alias for --disable-hdf5.
There are probably some bugs in this change in terms of
dependencies between format options.
Problems:
* CMake S3 support is still not working for Visual Studio
* A recent issue points out that there is work to do on handling
UTF8 filenames, but that will be addressed in a separate fix.
Notes:
* Consider converting all of our includes/.h files to use EXTERNL
cloud using a variant of the Zarr protocol and storage
format. This enhancement is generically referred to as "NCZarr".
The data model supported by NCZarr is netcdf-4 minus the user-defined
types and the String type. In this sense it is similar to the CDF-5
data model.
More detailed information about enabling and using NCZarr is
described in the document NUG/nczarr.md and in a
[Unidata Developer's blog entry](https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/blogs/developer/en/entry/overview-of-zarr-support-in).
WARNING: this code has had limited testing, so do use this version
for production work. Also, performance improvements are ongoing.
Note especially the following platform matrix of successful tests:
Platform | Build System | S3 support
------------------------------------
Linux+gcc | Automake | yes
Linux+gcc | CMake | yes
Visual Studio | CMake | no
Additionally, and as a consequence of the addition of NCZarr,
major changes have been made to the Filter API. NOTE: NCZarr
does not yet support filters, but these changes are enablers for
that support in the future. Note that it is possible
(probable?) that there will be some accidental reversions if the
changes here did not correctly mimic the existing filter testing.
In any case, previously filter ids and parameters were of type
unsigned int. In order to support the more general zarr filter
model, this was all converted to char*. The old HDF5-specific,
unsigned int operations are still supported but they are
wrappers around the new, char* based nc_filterx_XXX functions.
This entailed at least the following changes:
1. Added the files libdispatch/dfilterx.c and include/ncfilter.h
2. Some filterx utilities have been moved to libdispatch/daux.c
3. A new entry, "filter_actions" was added to the NCDispatch table
and the version bumped.
4. An overly complex set of structs was created to support funnelling
all of the filterx operations thru a single dispatch
"filter_actions" entry.
5. Move common code to from libhdf5 to libsrc4 so that it is accessible
to nczarr.
Changes directly related to Zarr:
1. Modified CMakeList.txt and configure.ac to support both C and C++
-- this is in support of S3 support via the awd-sdk libraries.
2. Define a size64_t type to support nczarr.
3. More reworking of libdispatch/dinfermodel.c to
support zarr and to regularize the structure of the fragments
section of a URL.
Changes not directly related to Zarr:
1. Make client-side filter registration be conditional, with default off.
2. Hack include/nc4internal.h to make some flags added by Ed be unique:
e.g. NC_CREAT, NC_INDEF, etc.
3. cleanup include/nchttp.h and libdispatch/dhttp.c.
4. Misc. changes to support compiling under Visual Studio including:
* Better testing under windows for dirent.h and opendir and closedir.
5. Misc. changes to the oc2 code to support various libcurl CURLOPT flags
and to centralize error reporting.
6. By default, suppress the vlen tests that have unfixed memory leaks; add option to enable them.
7. Make part of the nc_test/test_byterange.sh test be contingent on remotetest.unidata.ucar.edu being accessible.
Changes Left TO-DO:
1. fix provenance code, it is too HDF5 specific.
2. Fixed plugin building (nc_test4/hdf5plugins)
to be done properly by cmake and automake.
4. Duplicated part of the nc_test4 filter test code
in examples/C
An incomplete and untested set of hooks exist
for OS-X in nc_test4/findplugins.in. They need testing.
Specific changes:
1. Add dap4 code: libdap4 and dap4_test.
Note that until the d4ts server problem is solved, dap4 is turned off.
2. Modify various files to support dap4 flags:
configure.ac, Makefile.am, CMakeLists.txt, etc.
3. Add nc_test/test_common.sh. This centralizes
the handling of the locations of various
things in the build tree: e.g. where is
ncgen.exe located. See nc_test/test_common.sh
for details.
4. Modify .sh files to use test_common.sh
5. Obsolete separate oc2 by moving it to be part of
netcdf-c. This means replacing code with netcdf-c
equivalents.
5. Add --with-testserver to configure.ac to allow
override of the servers to be used for --enable-dap-remote-tests.
6. There were multiple versions of nctypealignment code. Try to
centralize in libdispatch/doffset.c and include/ncoffsets.h
7. Add a unit test for the ncuri code because of its complexity.
8. Move the findserver code out of libdispatch and into
a separate, self contained program in ncdap_test and dap4_test.
9. Move the dispatch header files (nc{3,4}dispatch.h) to
.../include because they are now shared by modules.
10. Revamp the handling of TOPSRCDIR and TOPBUILDDIR for shell scripts.
11. Make use of MREMAP if available
12. Misc. minor changes e.g.
- #include <config.h> -> #include "config.h"
- Add some no-install headers to /include
- extern -> EXTERNL and vice versa as needed
- misc header cleanup
- clean up checking for misc. unix vs microsoft functions
13. Change copyright decls in some files to point to LICENSE file.
14. Add notes to RELEASENOTES.md
