[netcdfgroup] refactored netCDF-4.1.2 Visual Studio port planned for last half of 2010...

• To: netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: [netcdfgroup] refactored netCDF-4.1.2 Visual Studio port planned for last half of 2010...
• From: Ed Hartnett <ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:57:56 -0600

Howdy all!

We recently (Summer of 2010) refactored the core building of the netCDF
library. Unfortunately this hopelessly broke the existing port to
Microsoft Visual Studio. Resources permitting, the development of a new
Visual Studio port will be undertaken in the second half of 2010 at
Unidata. Until then, no Visual Studio port of the latest version of the
library is available.

Users are advised that the netCDF build is known to work with Cygwin,
the free POSIX layer for Windows. Building netCDF with Cygwin, and
including the netCDF, HDF5, zlib, and Cygwin DLLs, will allow you to
access the netCDF C library on Windows, even from Visual Studio builds.

We understand that Windows users are most comfortable with a Visual
Studio build, and we intend to provide one.

The Visual Studio port is complicated by the following factors:

    * No configure script support on windows - the Unix build system
      uses a configure script to determine details of the build platform
      and allow the user to specify settings. Windows has no mechanism
      for this other than statically set properties. A Wndows-only
      config.h file needs to be created for windows using Cygwin, then
      included with the distribution. Since this contains the version
      string, it must be updated "by hand" before each release.
    * No m4 on windows - the Unix build uses the macro language m4 to
      generate some of the C code in the netCDF library (for example,
      libsrc/putget.c). M4 must be run under Cygwin to generate these
      files, and then they must be statically added to the windows
      distribution. Each new version of netCDF these files should be
      checked for changes. We are restricting new use of m4 for netCDF
      compiles, but that doesn't help with the existing files.
    * No user options on Windows - since Windows does not support a
      configure step, all user options must be pre-set in the Visual
      Studio property lists. As a simplification, many options available
      to Unix users will be unavailable to builders on Windows, such as
      --disable-dap, --disable-netcdf-4, and --disable-shared.
    * Large files (> 2 GB) have proved to be a problem area in past
      Windows builds.
    * Previous Windows ports have not had to deal with the new opendap
      client. 

Unidata is a community supported organization, and we welcome
collaboration with users who would like to assist with the windows
port. Users should be sure to start with the netCDF daily snapshot, not
a previous release of netCDF.

NOTE: User Viet Eitner has contributed a port of 4.1.1 to Visual Studio,
including an F90 port to Intel Fortran. Download source
(ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/contrib/win32/netcdf-4.1.1-win32-src.zip)
or binary
(ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/contrib/win32/netcdf-4.1.1-win32-bin.zip)
versions. This port was done before the code was refactored in 4.1.2.

Thanks,

Ed
-- 
Ed Hartnett  -- ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: [netcdfgroup] refactored netCDF-4.1.2 Visual Studio port planned for last half of 2010...
    • From: Sean McBride