[netcdfgroup] response to survey questions about windows DLL for recent versions of netCDF...

• To: netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: [netcdfgroup] response to survey questions about windows DLL for recent versions of netCDF...
• From: Ed Hartnett <ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 11:46:27 -0700

Howdy all!

This is the next part of our on-going series of responses to the user
community survey. Thanks to everyone who responded to the survey. We are
paying close attention so keep that feedback coming!

Several survey respondents identified the lack of recent windows DLL
releases for netCDF as a problem, and wished that the Windows platform
were better supported by netCDF. We completely agree, and wish to fully
support Windows netCDF users. We are limited only by our small staff of
programmers. 

In the past we have created and maintained a completely separate build
system for Windows. The build system we used for all other platforms,
autoconf/automake, was not we suited for working on Windows.

I am happy to report, however, that recent advances in the Cygwin and
mingw32 projects have made it possible to build netCDF on Cygwin, and
end up with a Windows DLL. This is very helpful, because it means that
we can stop maintaining a separate build system for Windows, and can
hope to produce a Windows DLL for every release, including the daily
snapshot releases.

However, there are some hard roads to travel before we reach the
promised land. I have started along the path of getting this all
working, and will report to this mailing list when the project is
complete, and a tested DLL is available. Until then, interested Windows
programmers should follow the action in the Unidata developers blog, and
on the test results page for the daily snapshot release of netCDF.

Detailed discussion of porting netCDF to windows will take place on the
netcdf-porting mailing list. Anyone interested in these details should
join and contribute to this mailing list (subscribe here:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/support/mailinglist/mailing-list-form.html)

Thanks!

Ed

-- 
Ed Hartnett  -- ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx