Update the following documentation files:
## docs/FAQ.md
* Discuss the use of UTF-8 names under Windows 10+.
## docs/filters.md
* Add documentation about NCzarr filters.
* Specifically Codec support and HDF5 <-> Codec translation
* Add documentation about standard filters
## docs/dispatch.md
* Convert from .dox format to .md (markdown) format.
* Add discussion about the user defined dispatch tables.
* Update the example.
* Abbreviate the NC_infermodel documentation and move the more detailed discusion to the companion *dinternal.md* documenation.
## docs/internal.md
This is a (mostly) new file that attempts to provide detailed
descriptions about how various features are implemented inside
the netcdf-c library. The topics currently covered the
following.
### Including C++ Code in the netcdf-c Library {#intern_c++}
The state of C compiler technology has reached the point where
it is possible to include C++ code into the netcdf-c library
code base. The document describes how to do this.
### Managing instances of complex data types
The document describes how to properly handle instances of
complex types (those with variable length). This involves
having functions that can recursively walk instances of such
types to perform various actions on them. These new functions
are intended to replace the *nc_free_vlen*, *nc_free_vlens* and
*nc_free_string* functions in *netcdf.h*.
### Inferring File Types
As described in the companion document -- docs/dispatch.md --
when *nc\_create()* or *nc\_open()* is called, the library must
figure out what kind of file is being created or opened. Once it
has figured out the file kind, the appropriate "dispatch table"
can be used to process that file.
As a result of the introduction of remote data access to the netcdf-c
library, the path arguments to *nc\_open()* and *nc\_create()* have
been extended to support URLs as paths. Processing URLs requires
some significant changes to the file inference algorithm. The
details of that processing are recorded in the document.
## S3 Related Fixes
* Add comprehensive support for specifying AWS profiles to provide access credentials.
* Parse the files "~/.aws/config" and "~/.aws/credentials to provide credentials for the HDF5 ROS3 driver and to locate default region.
* Add a function to obtain the currently active S3 credentials. The search rules are defined in docs/nczarr.md.
* Provide documentation for the new features.
* Modify the struct NCauth (in include/ncauth.h) to replace specific S3 credentials with a profile name.
* Add a unit test to test the operation of profile and credentials management.
* Add support for URLS of the form "s3://<bucket>/<key>"; this requires obtaining a default region.
* Allows the specification of profile and/or region in a URL of the form "#mode=nczarr,...&aws.region=...&aws.profile=..."
## Misc. Fixes
* Move the ezxml code to libdispatch so that it can be used both by DAP4 and nczarr.
* Modify nclist to provide a deep clone operation.
* Modify ncuri to provide a deep clone operation.
* Modify the .rc file format to allow the specification of a path to be tested when looking for an entry in the .rc file.
* Ensure that the NC_rcload function is called.
* Modify nchttp to support setting request headers.
re: https://github.com/zarr-developers/zarr-specs/issues/41
After discussions with the Zarr community, it was decided to
convert to a new representation of the NCZarr meta-data extensions: version 2.
These extensions store information necessary to mapping the Zarr data model
to the netcdf-4 data model.
The basic change is to remove the NCZarr specific objects: .nczarr, .nczgroup, .nczarray, and .nczattr.
The contents of these objects is moved into the corresponding existing Zarr objects as special keys. The mapping is as follows:
* ''.nczarr'' => ''/.zgroup/_NCZARR_SUPERBLOCK_''
* ''.nczgroup => ''.zgroup/_NCZARR_GROUP_''
* ''.nczarray => ''.zarray/_NCZARR_ARRAY_''
* ''.nczattr => ''.zattr/_NCZARR_ATTR_''
Backward compatibility is maintained by looking for the object ''/.nczarr''
and if found, then assuming that the dataset is in the older version 1 format.
This compatibility only supports reading of such version 1 datasets.
Documentation and test cases are also added.
Misc. Other Changes:
1. The json parsing code was added to the general library instead of nczarr only (ncjson.c, ncjson.h).
2. Improved support for different platform paths by allowing conversion
to a single common path representation.
3. Add some new error codes.
4. Modify nccopy usage to mention the new chunking specification.
re: issue https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/1251
Assume that you have the URL to a remote dataset
which is a normal netcdf-3 or netcdf-4 file.
This PR allows the netcdf-c to read that dataset's
contents as a netcdf file using HTTP byte ranges
if the remote server supports byte-range access.
Originally, this PR was set up to access Amazon S3 objects,
but it can also access other remote datasets such as those
provided by a Thredds server via the HTTPServer access protocol.
It may also work for other kinds of servers.
Note that this is not intended as a true production
capability because, as is known, this kind of access to
can be quite slow. In addition, the byte-range IO drivers
do not currently do any sort of optimization or caching.
An additional goal here is to gain some experience with
the Amazon S3 REST protocol.
This architecture and its use documented in
the file docs/byterange.dox.
There are currently two test cases:
1. nc_test/tst_s3raw.c - this does a simple open, check format, close cycle
for a remote netcdf-3 file and a remote netcdf-4 file.
2. nc_test/test_s3raw.sh - this uses ncdump to investigate some remote
datasets.
This PR also incorporates significantly changed model inference code
(see the superceded PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/1259).
1. It centralizes the code that infers the dispatcher.
2. It adds support for byte-range URLs
Other changes:
1. NC_HDF5_finalize was not being properly called by nc_finalize().
2. Fix minor bug in ncgen3.l
3. fix memory leak in nc4info.c
4. add code to walk the .daprc triples and to replace protocol=
fragment tag with a more general mode= tag.
Final Note:
Th inference code is still way too complicated. We need to move
to the validfile() model used by netcdf Java, where each
dispatcher is asked if it can process the file. This decentralizes
the inference code. This will be done after all the major new
dispatchers (PIO, Zarr, etc) have been implemented.
This is a follow up to PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/1173
Sorry that it is so big, but leak suppression can be complex.
This PR fixes all remaining memory leaks -- as determined by
-fsanitize=address, and with the exceptions noted below.
Unfortunately. there remains a significant leak that I cannot
solve. It involves vlens, and it is unclear if the leak is
occurring in the netcdf-c library or the HDF5 library.
I have added a check_PROGRAM to the ncdump directory to show the
problem. The program is called tst_vlen_demo.c To exercise it,
build the netcdf library with -fsanitize=address enabled. Then
go into ncdump and do a "make clean check". This should build
tst_vlen_demo without actually executing it. Then do the
command "./tst_vlen_demo" to see the output of the memory
checker. Note the the lost malloc is deep in the HDF5 library
(in H5Tvlen.c).
I am temporarily working around this error in the following way.
1. I modified several test scripts to not execute known vlen tests
that fail as described above.
2. Added an environment variable called NC_VLEN_NOTEST.
If set, then those specific tests are suppressed.
This should mean that the --disable-utilities option to
./configure should not need to be set to get a memory leak clean
build. This should allow for detection of any new leaks.
Note: I used an environment variable rather than a ./configure
option to control the vlen tests. This is because it is
temporary (I hope) and because it is a bit tricky for shell
scripts to access ./configure options.
Finally, as before, this only been tested with netcdf-4 and hdf5 support.
re: issue https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/1151
Modify DAP2 and DAP4 code to handle case when _FillValue type is not
same as the parent variable type.
Specifically:
1. Define a parameter [fillmismatch] to allow this mismatch;
default is to disallow.
2. If allowed, forcibly change the type of the _FillValue to match
the parent variable.
3. If allowed Convert the values to match new type
4. Generate a log message
5. if not allowed, then fail
Implementing this required some changes to ncdap_test/dapcvt.c
Also added test cases.
Minor Unrelated Changes:
1. There were a number of warnings about e.g.
assigning a const char* to a char*. Fix these
2. In nccopy.1, replace .NP with .IP "n"
(re PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/1144)
3. fix minor error in ncdump/ocprint
re: github issue https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/1111
One of the less common use cases for the in-memory feature is
apparently failing with HDF5-1.10.x. The fix is complicated and
requires significant changes to libhdf5/nc4memcb.c. The current
setup is detailed in the file docs/inmeminternal.dox.
Additionally, it was discovered that the program
nc_test/tst_inmemory.c, which is invoked by
nc_test/run_inmemory.sh, actually was failing because of the
above problem. But the failure is not detected since the script
does not return non-zero value.
Other Changes:
1. Fix nc_test_tst_inmemory to return errors correctly.
2. Make ncdap_tests/findtestserver.c and dap4_tests/findtestserver4.c
be generated from ncdap_test/findtestserver.c.in.
3. Make LOG() print output to stderr instead of stdout to
avoid contaminating e.g. ncdump output.
4. Modify the handling of NC_INMEMORY and NC_DISKLESS flags
to properly handle that NC_DISKLESS => NC_INMEMORY. This
affects a number of code pieces, especially memio.c.
and https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/708
Expand the NC_INMEMORY capabilities to support writing and accessing
the final modified memory.
Three new functions have been added:
nc_open_memio, nc_create_mem, and nc_close_memio.
The following new capabilities were added.
1. nc_open_memio() allows the NC_WRITE mode flag
so a chunk of memory can be passed in and be modified
2. nc_create_mem() allows the NC_INMEMORY flag to be set
to cause the created file to be kept in memory.
3. nc_close_mem() allows the final in-memory contents to be
retrieved at the time the file is closed.
4. A special flag, NC_MEMIO_LOCK, is provided to ensure that
the provided memory will not be freed or reallocated.
Note the following.
1. If nc_open_memio() is called with NC_WRITE, and NC_MEMIO_LOCK is not set,
then the netcdf-c library will take control of the incoming memory.
This means that the original memory block should not be freed
but the block returned by nc_close_mem() must be freed.
2. If nc_open_memio() is called with NC_WRITE, and NC_MEMIO_LOCK is set,
then modifications to the original memory may fail if the space available
is insufficient.
Documentation is provided in the file docs/inmemory.md.
A test case is provided: nc_test/tst_inmemory.c driven by
nc_test/run_inmemory.sh
WARNING: changes were made to the dispatch table for
the close entry. From int (*close)(int) to int (*close)(int,void*).
(I hope) metadata mechanism. This mostly just adds new pieces of
code (e.g. nclistmap) and does some minor fixes.
It should be transparent to everything else.
The next set of changes will be the big step.
2. Factored out the parameter string parsing for ncgen and nccopy
int libdispatch/dfilter.c + include/ncfilter.h
3. Allow a parameter string to use constant types other than
unsigned int. See docs/filters.md for details.
4. Moved the old content of include/netcdf_filter.h into include/netcdf.h
and removed include/netcdf_filter.h as no longer needed.
5. Force the test filter (bzip2) in nc_test4/filter_test to
be built using BUILT_SOURCES.
This relies on the HDF5 capability to
dynamically load compression filters.
Note that a compression filter is just
a subcase of filters.
The primary user-visible changes are as follows:
1. Add a standard header "netcdf_filter.h" that defines
the necessary API extensions
2. Modify ncgen to support two new special attributes
"_Filter_ID" and "_Filter_Parameters" so that compression
can be turned on when creating a file using ncgen.
4. Add a detailed description of filtering support
to the user's guide; see the file filters.md
5. Add a test case directory for this: nc_test4/filter_test.
It is fragile and a ./configure flags (-enable-filter-test)
is defined (default disabled) to shut this off this test
to avoid spurious 'make check' failures.
Note that the HDF5 documentation is not up-to-date, so
much of what is encoded here comes from examining the
actual code in the file H5PL.c in the HDF5 source code.
