Mahmood,
NetCDF is actually a family of file formats for scientific data. NetCDF
format is divided into two major kinds, netcdf-3 and netcdf-4.
Format version 3 is an older, simpler binary format that was invented by
Unidata. The internal binary format is strongly array oriented. Version 4
is actually a thin wrapper around a completely different internal format,
HDF5, which is independently maintained by the HDF Group. HDF5 is a more
modern format with more capabilities, and also much more complicated.
You can build the netCDF library with or without HDF5 support. Without
HDF5, the netCDF library can read and write only netcdf-3 format files, not
netcdf-4. Many published data sets are recently converting over from
netcdf-3 to netcdf-4 format, so you should favor netcdf-4 capability in
your library build.
If you are planning to use netCDF in an application, then I strongly
recommend that you study the introductory documentation. See the section
entitled Formats, etc.
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/faq.html
--Dave
On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Mahmood Naderan <mahmood.nt@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Excuse me, I used '--disable-netcdf-4' and it was OK!
> Basically, I am using netcdf for an application. I am not going to use it
> directly. Can someone explain what is the difference between disabling and
> enabling HDF5? Is that related to the performance?
>
> Regards,
> Mahmood
>
