I have to admit that I too wax nostalgic for the --with-hdf5 days. (I still
haven't been able to get 4.1.3-beta1 to build, so I'm sticking with 4.1.1 for
the foreseeable future.)
On Aug 2, 2011, at 12:43 PM, Jennifer Adams wrote:
> I agree with everything in this post, building 4.1.3 has become a gigantic
> pain. And I didn't look in the release notes to see that the --with-hdf5
> option had been eliminated and was baffled by why all the configure test
> programs were having trouble finding my hdf5 and szip builds. Now I have read
> the release notes and I see you are passing your pain onto your users. Humph!
> There ought to be a warning right at the beginning of the configure script,
> when it parses the args and switches, and also in the --help output if
> possible. I see the new configure setup as being broken because of all the
> flags that need to be set/unset, which is not the way it should be -- none of
> the other 25 libraries I have to build for GrADS work this way. What is the
> presumed standard way of finding libraries? Please add some documentation
> with guidance for the best way to proceed without the --with-hdf5 (et al.)
> options. Does hdf5 library need a hdf5-config file or a pkgconfig file?
> Should we lobby the HDF Group to implement such a thing, because this new set
> up is really awful.
> --Jennifer
>
>
> On Aug 2, 2011, at 11:07 AM, Fabrício Zimmerer Murta wrote:
>
>> I’ve just read in the NetCDF’s release notes the following, for the
>> 4.1.3-beta1 version from 2011-04-29:
>>
>> “Took out --with-hdf5 and related options due to high
>> cost of maintaining this non-standard way of finding
>> libraries.”
>>
>> Now, to the facts:
>> 1. this option forces people with custom HDF5 libraries to manually change
>> CFLAGS, FCFLAGS and LDFLAGS in compile time.
>> 2. NetCDF 4.1.3 requires HDF5 1.8.6
>> 3. Current linux distros comes with just HDF5 1.8.4
>>
>> Result: You removed the option to select HDF libraries when it would be most
>> needed as everyone is needing to install custom HDF5 library on their
>> computer. This makes people lifes a lot harder, you know? I am planning on
>> shipping NetCDF and HDF5 as nested packages with a project we are doing due
>> to excessive compile problems, and we will be forced to add back AC_WITH_ARG
>> for HDF5 in NetCDF provided package, in order for it to work in accordance
>> with the main package’s arguments.
>>
>> And, why did you call the AC_ARG_WITH option a non-standard way to find
>> libraries? I thought it was a standartizing attempt from GNU autotools to
>> aid in linking to packages...
>>
>> - fabricio
>>
--
Dr. Christopher Lynnes NASA/GSFC, Code 610.2 phone: 301-614-5185
