[netcdf-porting] NetCDF and Visual Studio 2008

• To: netcdf-porting@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: [netcdf-porting] NetCDF and Visual Studio 2008
• From: "Maciej Radziejewski" <maciej.rhelp@xxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 16:45:19 +0200

Hi,

I am trying to compile NetCDF under Visual Studio 2008 Prof. (aka VS
9.0). Yes, I know: every new version of Visual Studio has new
surprises. I attach notes with details of the problems I encountered.

I tried the current 4.0 stable build as well as the daily snapshots of
NetCDF 3 and 4. As I am still unable to compile the library I will use
the last available binaries: for NetCDF 3.6.1. However, I have a
couple of suggestions, if that is ok:

- The win32 binaries were not easy to find. It would seem logical to
put the link on the page where other (non-Windows) people can download
their binaries.

- It would be nice if you made newer builds available. I use VS 2008,
but if you can compile NetCDF 4.0 with VS 2005, I could use the
resulting library.

- New versions of Visual C++ (incl. 2008) are available for free from
msdn.microsoft.com, as so-called "express editions". The express
version does not have all the features of prof. edition, but it should
be ok for testing the distribution.

- I wanted to compile from the command line, but I do not know how to.
There is no "makefile", and Microsoft's nmake would not accept
makefile.in as input. In any case, command-line compilation might
prove more resilient to Microsoft's ever-changing ideas on how to
improve their build system.

Thanks and best wishes,

Maciej.

Buidling NetCDF under VS 2008.
I tried: NetCDF 4.0 (stable) and development snapshots: 
netcdf-3.6.3-snapshot2008080506, netcdf-4.0-snapshot2008073106.
Here is the detailed description of the problems and some workarounds.


1. VS converted the sln file to the new version. I removed the /Wp64 compiler 
option (deprecated).

2. I got errors resulting from the definition

typedef long _off_t

in <sys/types.h>. This issue was previously dicussed on the list. I resolved it 
by addin the lines:

#ifndef _OFF_T_DEFINED
typedef long _off_t;                    /* file offset value */
#define _OFF_T_DEFINED
#endif

before #include <sys/types.h> in nc.h.


3. Some include files where missing:

inttypes.h
unistd.h

I got inttypes.h and a compatible stdint.h from wikipedia. I created an empty 
unistd.h.
I got this problem in the stable 4.0 release, and then, since I already had the 
files in standard directories, it did not come up anymore.


4. I had to replace:

extern char *sys_errlist[];

with

extern char **sys_errlist;

in the definition of strerror(int errnum) in error.c.


5. I am still getting unresolved externals:

_utf8proc_NFC
_utf8proc_check

I do not know how to deal with them.