Hi David, > just thought I'd report a possible problem with the new netcdf 4.1.3 > release. When I tried to make it on a clean CentOS machine, specifying the > --with-hdf5=/path/to/my/hdf5/installation flag to configure did not work. It > kept complaining that it could not find hdf5. Dropping back to 4.1.2, with > the exact same configure command, worked fine. Although the change is not very prominent in our documentation, there was an important simplification in the build process with release 4.1.3, as mentioned at the top of the Release Notes: [NCF-20] - use of --with-hdf5= and other such options violates conventions and causes build problems indicating that the "--with-hdf5" configure option was removed and replaced by the use of environment variables. The reason for this change to the build procedure is explained in our Jira database, accessible from the Release notes: https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/jira/browse/NCF-20 where, if you click on the "History" tab (!), you can uncover the following: Although these options were put in with the best of intentions, and following the example of the HDF5 package, they were nonetheless misguided, and contributed to many bugs, and many support issues. Additionally, since this is not the normal way that packages are built, the use of these options caused netCDF to require more documentation, and, what's worse, required that each installer read the documentation (this is not the usual case with Unix packages, which can generally be built without setting any options.) More importantly, the use of the --with-hdf5 option (and similar ones like --with-zlib, --with-szlib, --with-pnetcdf, --with-hdf4) cause two serious bugs: 1 - No way for these options to work on platforms that have libraries in /lib and /lib64 for 32 and 64 bit builds. 2 - Caused problem for for cross-compiles link the mingw32 build and builds on some supercomputers. Ultimately, it is only possible for the builder of the software to know what settings to use in the various FLAG environment variables. All of our attempts to "help" in this area just result in problems for some small (but important) fraction of the user base. Therefore I have decided that all these options must go, both in netCDF and in libCF. I regret the inconvenience this may cause users who have become accustomed to these options. So try building 4.1.3 using the environment variables CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS set to appropriate values, such as CPPFLAGS=-I/share/ed/local/spike/include LDFLAGS=-L/share/ed/local/spike/lib instead of using "--with-hdf5=...". And thanks for sending in the support report, it indicates we still need to improve the documentation and Release Notes information to alert users to the change. --Russ Russ Rew UCAR Unidata Program address@hidden http://www.unidata.ucar.edu Ticket Details =================== Ticket ID: NCE-881982 Department: Support netCDF Priority: Normal Status: Closed
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