Unidata/netcdf-c v4.3.1

netCDF-C 4.3.1

on GitHub

Below are the release notes for all changes made since the v4.3.0 release. The notes describe changes in the final release as well as the cumulative change notes for release candidates 1-6.

4.3.1 Released 2014-01-16

• Add an extended format inquiry method to the netcdf API: nc_inq_format_extended. NC_HAVE_INQ_FORMAT_EXTENDED is defined in netcdf.h NCF-273

4.3.1-rc6 Released 2013-12-19

• Fixed fill value handling for string types in nc4_get_vara().
• Corrected behavior of nc_inq_unlimdim and nv_inq_unlimdims to report dimids
  in same order as nc_inq_dimids.
• Addressed an issue reported by Jeff Whitaker regarding nc_inq_nvars returning an incorrect number of dimensions (this issue was introduced in 4.3.1-rc5). Integrated a test contributed by Jeff Whitaker.
• A number of previously-disabled unit tests were reviewed and made active.

4.3.1-rc5 Released 2013-12-06

• When opening a netCDF-4 file, streamline the iteration over objects in the underlying HDF5 file.
• Fixed netCDF-4 failure when renaming a dimension and renaming a variable using that dimension, in either order. NCF-177
• When compiling with hdf4 support, both autotools and cmake-based builds now properly look for the libjpeg dependency and will link against it when found (or complain if it's not). Also added ENABLE_HDF4_FILE_TESTS option to CMake-based builds.
• Fixed bug in ncgen; it was not properly filling empty string constants ("") to be the proper length. NCF-279
• Fixed bug in ncgen where it was interpreting int64 constants
  as uint64 constants. NCF-278
• Fixed bug in handling Http Basic Authorization. The code was actually there but was not being executed. NCF-277
• Added hack to the DAP code to address a problem with the Columbia.edu server. That server does not serve up proper DAP2 DDS replies. The Dataset {...} name changes depending on if the request has certain kinds of constraints. NCF-276
• Fixed bugs with ncdump annotation of values, using -b or -f
  options. NCF-275

4.3.1-rc4 Released 2013-11-06

• Addressed an issue on Windows where fstat would report an incorrect file size on files > 4GB. NCF-219
• Added better documentation about accessing ESG datasets.
  See http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/esg.html.
• Corrected an issue with CMake-based builds enabling HDF4 support where the HDF4 libraries were in a non-standard location.
• Fix bug introduced by NCF-267 where octal constants above
  '\177' were not recognized as proper octal constants. NCF-271
• Fixed an issue where the netcdf.3 man page was not being installed by CMake-based builds. Github

4.3.1-rc3 Released 2013-09-24

• Modify ncgen to support NUL characters in character array
  constants. NCF-267
• Modify ncgen to support disambiguating references to
  an enum constant in a data list. NCF-265
• Corrected bug in netCDF-4 dimension ID ordering assumptions, resulting in access that works locally but fails through DAP server. NCF-166
• Added a new configuration flag, NC_USE_STATIC_CRT for CMake-based Windows builds. The default value is 'OFF'. This will allow the user to define whether to use the shared CRT libraries (\MD) or static CRT libraries (\MT) in Visual Studio builds.
• Ensure netCDF-4 compiles with OpenMPI as an alternative to MPICH2. NCF-160
• Addressed issue with hanging Parallel netCDF-4 using HDF5 1.8.10. NCF-240
• Addressed issue with Large File Support on Windows, using both 32 and 64-bit builds. NCF-219
• Removed deprecated directories:
  • librpc/
  • udunits/
  • libcf/
  • libcdmr/

4.3.1-rc2 Released 2013-08-19

• Added configure and accompanying configuration files/templates to release repository. These will only be added to tagged releases on GitHub.
• Integrated a fix by Quincey Koziol which addressed a variation of NCF-250, Fix issue of netCDF-4 parallel independent access with unlimited dimension hanging.
• Integrated change contributed by Orion Poplawski which integrated GNUInstallDirs into the netCDF-C CMake system; this will permit systems that install into lib64 (such as Fedora) to make install without problem.
• Corrected an error with the CMake config files that resulted in the netcdf.3 manpage not being built or installed.

4.3.1-rc1 Released 2013-08-09

• Migrated from the netCDF-C subversion repository to a publically available GitHub repository available at https://github.com/Unidata/netCDF-C. This repository may be checked out (cloned) with the following command:

  $ git clone https://github.com/Unidata/netCDF-C.git

• Note: in this release, it is necessary to generate the configure script and makefile templates using autoreconf in the root netCDF-C directory.:

  $ autoreconf -i -f

• Added nc_rename_grp to allow for group renaming in netCDF-4 files. NCF-204

• Added a NC_HAVE_RENAME_GRP macro to netcdf.h, as per a request by Charlie Zender. This will allow software compiling against netcdf to easily query whether or not nc_rename_grp() is available.

• Added Greg Sjaardema's contributed optimization for the nc4_find_dim_len function in libsrc4/nc4internal.c. The patch eliminates several malloc/free calls that exist in the original coding.

• Added support for dynamic loading, to compliment the dynamic loading support introduced in hdf 1.8.11. Dynamic loading support depends on libdl, and is enabled as follows: NCF-258

  • autotools-based builds: --enable-dynamic-loading
  • cmake-based builds: -DENABLE_DYNAMIC_LOADING=ON

• Fix issue of netCDF-4 parallel independent access with unlimited dimension hanging. Extending the size of an unlimited dimension in HDF5 must be a collective operation, so now an error is returned if trying to extend in independent access mode. NCF-250

• Fixed bug with netCDF-4's inability to read HDF5 scalar numeric attributes. Also allow, in addition to zero length strings, a new NULL pointer as a string value. to improve interoperability with HDF5. This required a new CDL constant, 'NIL', that can be output from ncdump for such a string value in an HDF5 or netCDF-4 file. The ncgen utility was also modified to properly handle such NIL values for strings. NCF-56

• Parallel-build portability fixes, particularly for OpenMPI and gcc/gfortran-4.8.x on OSX.

• Fix contributed by Nath Gopalaswamy to large file problem reading netCDF classic or 64-bit offset files that have a UINT32_MAX flag for large last record size of a variable that has values larger than 1 byte. This problem had previously been fixed for writing such data, but was only tested with an ncbyte variable.

• Fixed various minor documentation problems.