-------------------------------------------------------------------------- The HDF Group Home Page: http://hdfgroup.org/ Helpdesk & Mailing Lists Info: http://hdfgroup.org/services/support.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter #107 May 15, 2009 CONTENTS . Release of HDF5 1.8.3 . Release of HDF5 1.6.9 . Status of HDF5 1.6 . Support Status of .NET 2003 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Release of HDF5 1.8.3 ===================== As of May 14th, the HDF5 1.8.3 release has been made available from the HDF5 home page. PLEASE NOTE: If you downloaded the 1.8.3 software prior to May 14, 2009, you may encounter some performance issues, as discussed in the following document: http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/faq/mcacheconf.html Please download the software again to ensure that you have the latest officially released version. The HDF5 Home Page is located here: http://www.hdfgroup.org/products/hdf5/index.html To download HDF5 1.8.3, see this page: http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/release/obtain5.html There are several new features and changes in HDF5 1.8.3, which include: o The addition of new C functions (and some Fortran counterparts). The following functions have been added to enable raw data chunk cache properties to be set on a dataset access property list: H5Pset_chunk_cache (h5pset_chunk_cache_f) H5Pget_chunk_cache (h5pget_chunk_cache_f) H5Dget_access_plist (h5dget_access_plist_f) For further details, see the RFC: http://www.hdfgroup.org/pubs/rfcs/RFC_chunk_cache_functions.pdf The following functions have been added to allow greater flexibility when traversing external links: H5Pset_elink_cb H5Pget_elink_cb H5Pset_elink_acc_flags H5Pget_elink_acc_flags For further details, see the RFC, at: http://www.hdfgroup.org/pubs/rfcs/RFC_elink_callback.pdf Other new functions are: H5Iis_valid (h5iis_valid_f) H5set_free_list_limits o API versioning was added to the H5Z_class_t structure. H5Z_class_t is the structure used to define a user-defined filter. With this change, it will be easier to migrate applications that use user-defined filters to 1.8, and no changes to the code for registering the filter should be necessary. HOWEVER, this can cause problems for existing applications that link with the HDF5 1.8 library and use the 1.6 API, as H5Z_class_t will now map to the old structure definition. This can be fixed by modifying the code to take this into account, so the old version of the structure is used whenever compiling against 1.8.3. It can also be fixed by defining the macro H5Z_class_t_vers to 2 before including hdf5.h, to force the library to use the newer H5Z_class_t regardless of the API setting. o The contents of the libhdf5.settings file has been embedded into the hdf5 executables so that "orphaned" executables can display (via the Unix strings command, for example) the library settings used to build the executables. o Many bug fixes Please refer to the Release Notes for a comprehensive list of new features and changes in this release: http://www.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/current/src/hdf5-1.8.3-RELEASE.txt Release of HDF5 1.6.9 ===================== The HDF5 1.6.9 release is now available, and can be downloaded from the HDF5 Home Page, at: http://www.hdfgroup.org/products/hdf5/index.html The download page for HDF5 1.6.9 is located here: http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/release/obtain516.html HDF5 1.6.9 is a minor release with a few new features and changes. Please refer to the Release Notes for a detailed list of what changed in this release: http://www.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/current16/src/hdf5-1.6.9-RELEASE.txt Status of HDF5 1.6 ================== Please note that there will only be one more release of HDF5 1.6 (version HDF5 1.6.10), due out in November 2009. Although it is not yet urgent to move to the HDF5 1.8 release, users are encouraged to do so when possible. Support Status of .NET 2003 =========================== HDF5 1.6.9 and HDF5 1.8.3 are the last HDF5 releases to support .NET 2003. ------------------------------------------------------------- For questions regarding these or other HDF issues, contact: help@hdfgroup.org