\page winbin Installing and Using netCDF-C Libraries in a Windows Environment

There are several development environments available for programmers who develop on Windows. 

* Microsoft Visual Studio 
* MSYS/MinGW
* Cygwin

For the latter two, the Linux/Unix build instructions may be used. For the former build environment, you may download using the Windows build instructions, or you may download the pre-built netCDF-C libraries from this page.

Users who prefer to build the netCDF-C libraries from source in a Windows environment using Microsoft Visual Studio are referred to \ref netCDF-CMake

# Getting pre-built netCDF-C Libraries for Visual Studio

These libraries can be used with Visual Studio 2010 projects.  The downloads are installer packages which contain the netCDF-C libraries and utilities (ncgen, ncgen3, ncdump and nccopy), as well as the associated dependencies.  

Configuration		| 32-bit 						| 64-bit |
:-------------------|:--------							|:-------|
netCDF 3		| [netCDF4.3RC2-NC3-32.exe][1]		| [netCDF4.3RC2-NC3-64.exe][5] 
netCDF3+DAP		| [netCDF4.3RC2-NC3-DAP-32.exe][2]	| [netCDF4.3RC2-NC3-DAP-64.exe][6]
netCDF4			| [netCDF4.3RC2-NC4-32.exe][3]		| [netCDF4.3RC2-NC4-64.exe][7]
netCDF4+DAP		| [netCDF4.3RC2-NC4-DAP-32.exe][4]	| [netCDF4.3RC2-NC4-DAP-64.exe][8]

# Using the netCDF-C Libraries with Visual Studio
In order to use the netcdf libraries, you must ensure that the .dll files (along with any dependencies from deps/shared/bin) are on the system path. In order to compile a program using these libraries, you must first link your program against the appropriate 'import' (.lib) libraries.  

## Install Hierarchy

When installed, the netCDF libraries are placed in the specified locations, along with the netCDF-C utilities and 

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<IMG SRC="InstallTreeWindows.jpg" />
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# Notes

*The following points should be considered when using the netCDF-C libraries on Windows.*

1. Currently, 64-bit offset large file support is only available when using the 64-bit libraries. [NCF-219]
2. When building the netCDF-C libraries with netCDF4 support, using the 'debug' libraries may cause extraneous warnings. These warnings are related to cross-dll memory management, and appear to be harmless. You can safely ignore them by using the 'release' libraries. [NCF-220]

Both of these issues are being actively worked on.  The may be tracked in the Unidata JIRA system at <http://bugtracking.unidata.ucar.edu/>, using the provided JIRA identifiers.

[1]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/win_netcdf/netCDF4.3RC2-NC3-32.exe
[2]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/win_netcdf/netCDF4.3RC2-NC3-DAP-32.exe
[3]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/win_netcdf/netCDF4.3RC2-NC4-32.exe
[4]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/win_netcdf/netCDF4.3RC2-NC4-DAP-32.exe
[5]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/win_netcdf/netCDF4.3RC2-NC3-64.exe
[6]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/win_netcdf/netCDF4.3RC2-NC3-DAP-64.exe
[7]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/win_netcdf/netCDF4.3RC2-NC4-64.exe
[8]: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/win_netcdf/netCDF4.3RC2-NC4-DAP-64.exe