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.
The primary change is to support the use of a zip file as a
storage format. Simultaneously the .nz4 support is made obsolete
Use of zip requires the libzip support library, so a number of
changes to the build files (Makefile.am, CMakeLists.txt) are
necessary to locate and incorporate libzip. The nczarr_tests
tests are also changed to add zip testing.
Other changes:
* Make sure distcheck leaves no files around.
* Add some functions to netcdf_aux to export some functions of libnetcdf.
* Add a new error NC_EFOUND as the complement of NC_EEMPTY.
* Add tracing support to nclog and use it in libnczarr.
* Modify the zmap interface to support the writeonce semantics of zip.
* Create a new s3util.c to support a variety of S3 auxilliary functions.
* EXTERNL'ize a number of functions so they can be used in s3util.
* Add support for the S3 ListObjects CommonPrefixes mechanism
to improve search.
* Add experimental support for running nczarr X s3 tests against
the actual Amazon S3 cloud.
* Replace wholevar with more useful wholechunk optimization
* Add optimization to read multiple values at one time
* Replace NCDEFAULT_get/put_vars with native nczarr versions.
* Clarify chunk projection computations
* zdebdispatch.h
* Add more chunking test cases and re-enable run_chunkcases
* If !szip, then suppress deflate interference test
* Make H5Znoop(1) filter produce more information
* cleanup bzlib.c API
Primary changes:
* Add an improved cache system to speed up performance.
* Fix NCZarr to properly handle scalar variables.
Misc. Related Changes:
* Added unit tests for extendible hash and for the generic cache.
* Add config parameter to set size of the NCZarr cache.
* Add initial performance tests but leave them unused.
* Add CRC64 support.
* Move location of ncdumpchunks utility from /ncgen to /ncdump.
* Refactor auth support.
Misc. Unrelated Changes:
* More cleanup of the S3 support
* Add support for S3 authentication in .rc files: HTTP.S3.ACCESSID and HTTP.S3.SECRETKEY.
* Remove the hashkey from the struct OBJHDR since it is never used.
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.
