[svn-r20101] Description:

  Copy 1.8.6 RELEASE.txt into HISTORY-1.8.txt
  on the 1.8 branch, and update platforms tested
  and tested configurations sections in the 
  1.8 RELEASE.txt file.

1 files changed, 611 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/release_docs/HISTORY-1_8.txt b/release_docs/HISTORY-1_8.txt
index c138b45..c005ff7 100644
--- a/release_docs/HISTORY-1_8.txt
+++ b/release_docs/HISTORY-1_8.txt
@@ -3,6 +3,8 @@ HDF5 History
 
 This file contains development history of HDF5 1.8 branch
 
+7.      Release Information for hdf5-1.8.6
+6.      Release Information for hdf5-1.8.5
 5.      Release Information for hdf5-1.8.4
 4.      Release Information for hdf5-1.8.3
 3.      Release Information for hdf5-1.8.2
@@ -14,7 +16,615 @@ This file contains development history of HDF5 1.8 branch
 %%%%1.8.6%%%%   
 
 
-  ===> Copy RELEASE.TXT from 1.8.6 release branch HERE after it is completed!!!
+HDF5 version 1.8.6 released on Mon Feb 14 10:26:30 CST 2011
+================================================================================
+
+INTRODUCTION
+============
+
+This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.8.5 and 
+HDF5 1.8.6, and contains information on the platforms tested and 
+known problems in HDF5-1.8.6. 
+For more details, see the files HISTORY-1_0-1_8_0_rc3.txt 
+and HISTORY-1_8.txt in the release_docs/ directory of the HDF5 source.
+
+Links to the HDF5 1.8.6 source code, documentation, and additional materials
+can be found on the HDF5 web page at:
+
+     http://www.hdfgroup.org/products/hdf5/
+
+The HDF5 1.8.6 release can be obtained from:
+
+     http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/release/obtain5.html
+
+User documentation for 1.8.6 can be accessed directly at this location: 
+
+     http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/
+
+New features in the HDF5-1.8.x release series, including brief general 
+descriptions of some new and modified APIs, are described in the "What's New 
+in 1.8.0?" document:
+
+     http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/ADGuide/WhatsNew180.html
+
+All new and modified APIs are listed in detail in the "HDF5 Software Changes 
+from Release to Release" document, in the section "Release 1.8.6 (current 
+release) versus Release 1.8.5":
+
+     http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/ADGuide/Changes.html
+
+If you have any questions or comments, please send them to the HDF Help Desk:
+
+     help@hdfgroup.org
+
+
+CONTENTS
+========
+
+- New Features
+- Support for New Platforms, Languages, and Compilers
+- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.8.5
+- Platforms Tested
+- Supported Configuration Features Summary
+- Known Problems
+
+
+New Features
+============
+
+    Configuration
+    -------------
+    - CMake: Improved CPack packaging, added parallel commands, improved
+      configuration options (better similarity to configure), added more
+      tests, better support for use in external cmake projects. 
+      (ADB - 2010/10/07)
+    - The default configuration setting for official releases is 
+      --enable-production. For unofficial releases, the default configuration 
+      setting has been --disable-production. (AKC  - 2010/05/28)
+    Library
+    -------
+    - Added support for thread safety on Windows using the Windows threads 
+      library. Use the HDF5_ENABLE_THREADSAFE option in CMake on a Windows 
+      platform to enable this functionality. This is supported on Windows 
+      Vista and newer Windows operating systems. (MAM - 2010/09/10)
+    - H5Tset_order and H5Tget_order now support all datatypes.  A new byte 
+      order, H5T_ORDER_MIXED, has been added specifically for a compound 
+      datatype and its derived type.  (SLU - 2010/8/23) 
+    - Improved performance of metadata I/O by changing the default algorithm 
+      to perform I/O from all processes (instead of just process 0) when using 
+      parallel I/O drivers. (QAK - 2010/07/19)
+    - Improved performance of I/O on datasets with the same shape, but 
+      different rank. (QAK - 2010/07/19)
+    - Improved performance of the chunk cache by avoiding unnecessary b-tree 
+      lookups of chunks already in cache. (NAF - 2010/06/15) 
+      
+    Parallel Library
+    ----------------
+    - None
+ 
+    Tools
+    -----
+    - h5diff: Added a new flag: --exclude-path.  The specified path to an 
+      object will be excluded when comparing two files or two groups. If a 
+      group is specified to be excluded, all member objects of that group 
+      will be excluded.  (JKM - 2010/09/16).
+    - h5ls: Added a new flag: --no-dangling-links.  See --help output for 
+      details. (JKM - 2010/06/15)
+    - h5ls: Added a new flag --follow-symlinks.  See --help output for 
+      details. (JKM - 2010/05/25)
+      
+    High-Level APIs
+    ---------------
+    - None
+
+    F90 API
+    -------
+     - None
+
+    C++ API
+    -------
+    - None
+
+
+Support for New Platforms, Languages, and Compilers
+===================================================
+    - Sun C and C++ 5.10 and Sun Fortran 95 8.4.
+    - Mac OS X 10.6.4 with gcc 4.2.1 and gfortran 4.6
+
+
+Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.8.5
+==========================
+
+    Configuration
+    -------------
+    - The default number of MPI processes for testing purposes has been 
+      changed from 3 to 6.  (AKC - 2010/11/11)
+    - Some tests in tools/h5repack may fail in AIX systems when -q32 mode is 
+      used. The error is caused by not requesting enough memory in default.
+      Added "env LDR_CNTRL=MAXDATA=0x20000000@DSA" into the $RUNSERIAL and
+      $RUNPARALLE in the AIX config file so that executables are tested with
+      more memory.  (AKC - 2010/11/11)
+    - Removed recognition of the parallel compilers of LAM(hcc) and
+      ChMPIon(cmpicc) since we have no access to these two MPI implementations
+      and cannot verify their correctness. (AKC - 2010/07/14 - Bug 1921)
+    - PHDF5 was changed to use "mpiexec" instead of mpirun as the default 
+      MPI applications startup command as defined in the MPI-2 definition, 
+      section 4.1. (AKC - 2010/06/11 - Bug 1921)
+      
+    Library
+    -------
+    - Fixed a bug that caused big endian machines to generate corrupt files
+      when using the scale-offset filter with floating point data or fill
+      values.  Note that such datasets will no longer be readable by any
+      by any machine after this patch.  (NAF - 2010/02/02 - Bug 2131)
+    - Retrieving a link's name by index in the case where the link is external
+      and the file that the link refers to doesn't exist will now fail 
+      gracefully rather than cause a segmentation fault. (MAM - 2010/11/17)
+    - Modified metadata accumulator to better track accumulated dirty metadata 
+      in an effort to reduce unnecessary I/O in certain situations and to 
+      fix some other corner cases which were prone to error. (MAM - 2010/10/15)
+    - Added a new set of unit tests that are run during 'make check' to verify 
+      the behavior of the metadata accumulator. (MAM - 2010/10/15)
+    - Modified library to always cache symbol table information.  Libraries
+      from version 1.6.3 and earler have a bug which causes them to require 
+      this information for some operations. (NAF - 2010/09/21 - Bug 1864)
+    - Fixed a bug where the library could generate an assertion/core dump when
+      a file that had been created with H5Pset_libver_bounds(fapl,
+      H5F_LIBVER_LATEST, H5F_LIBVER_LATEST) but didn't have a superblock
+      extension was later reopened.  (QAK - 2010/09/16 - Bug 1968)
+    - Fixed a bug that could occur when getting information for a new-style
+      group that was previously opened through a file handle that was later
+      closed. (NAF - 2010/09/15)
+    - Added define check in H5public.h if stdint.h is supported by the C++
+      compiler. This define is only available on Windows with VS2010 and using
+      CMake to build the library. (ADB - 2010/09/13 - Bug 1938)
+    - When a mandatory filter failed to write data chunks, the dataset
+      couldn't close (bug 1260).  The fix releases all resources and closes
+      the dataset but returns a failure. (SLU - 2010/09/08) 
+    - H5Eset_current_stack now also closes the error stack set as the 
+      default. This is to avoid a potential problem. 
+      (SLU - 2010/09/07 - Bug 1799)
+    - Corrected situation where 1-D chunked dataset could get created by an
+      application without calling H5Pset_chunk().  H5Pset_chunk is now
+      required for creating all chunked datasets.  (QAK - 2010/09/02)
+    - Fixed many memory issues that valgrind exposed.  (QAK - 2010/08/24)
+    - Fixed the bug in the filter's public CAN_APPLY function.  The return
+      value should be htri_t not herr_t. (SLU - 2010/08/05 - Bug 1239)
+    - Fixed the STDIO VFD to use fseeko64 instead of fseek64 for 64-bit I/O 
+      support. (AKC - 2010/7/30)
+    - Fixed a bug in the direct I/O driver that could render files with certain
+      kinds of unaligned data unreadable or corrupt them. (NAF - 2010/07/28)
+    - valgrind reported an error of copying data to itself when a new attribute 
+      is written.  Fixed by taking out the memcpy step in the attribute code. 
+      (SLU - 2010/07/28 - Bug 1956)
+    - Corrected various issues in the MPI datatype creation code which could
+      cause resource leaks or incorrect behavior (and may improve the
+      performance as well).  (QAK - 2010/07/19)
+    - Fixed a bug that could cause file corruption when using non-default sizes
+      of addresses and/or lengths.  This bug could also cause uncorrupted files
+      with this property to be unreadable.  This bug was introduced in 1.8.5.
+      (NAF - 2010/07/16 - Bug 1951)
+
+    Parallel Library
+    ----------------
+    - None
+
+    Tools
+    -----
+    - Fixed h5diff to compare member objects and groups recursively when 
+      two files or groups are compared. (JKM - 2010/9/16 - Bug 1975)
+    - Fixed h5repack to be able to convert a dataset to COMPACT layout.
+      (JKM - 2010/09/15 - Bug 1896)
+    - Changed h5ls to not interpret special characters in object or attribute
+      names for output. (JKM - 2010/06/28 - Bug 1784)
+    - Revised the order of arguments for h5cc, h5fc, h5c++, h5pcc and h5pfc. 
+      CPPFLAGS, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, and LIBS have been duplicated with an H5BLD_ 
+      prefix to put the flags and paths from the hdf5 build in the correct 
+      places and allow the script user to add entries in CPPFLAGS, CFLAGS, 
+      LDFLAGS, and LIBS that will take precedence over those from the hdf5 
+      build. The user can make these entries persistent by editing 
+      CFLAGSBASE, CPPFLAGSBASE, LDFLAGSBASE, and LIBSBASE near the top of 
+      the script or temporary by setting HDF5_CFLAGS, HDF5_CPPFLAGS, 
+      HDF5_LDFLAGS, or HDF5_LIBS in the environment. The new order of 
+      arguments in these scripts is $CLINKER $H5BLD_CPPFLAGS $CPPFLAGS 
+      $H5BLD_CFLAGS $CFLAGS $LDFLAGS $clibpath $link_objs $LIBS $link_args 
+      $shared_link. (LRK - 2010/10/25 - Bug 1973)
+
+    F90 API
+    ------
+    - None
+
+    C++ API
+    ------
+    - None
+
+    High-Level APIs:
+    ------
+    - None
+
+    Fortran High-Level APIs:
+    ------
+    - None
+
+
+Platforms Tested
+================
+The following platforms and compilers have been tested for this release.
+
+    AIX 6.1                       xlc 11.1.0.3
+    (NCSA BP)                     xlC 11.1.0.3
+                                  xlf 13.1.0.3
+                                  mpcc_r 11.1.0.3
+                                  mpxlf_r 13.1.0.3
+
+    FreeBSD 6.3-STABLE i386       gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
+    (duty)                        g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
+                                  gcc 4.4.5 20100803
+                                  g++ 4.4.5 20100803
+                                  gfortran 4.4.5 20100803
+
+    FreeBSD 6.3-STABLE amd64      gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
+    (liberty)                     g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
+                                  gcc 4.4.5 20100803
+                                  g++ 4.4.5 20100803
+                                  gfortran 4.4.5 20100803
+
+    Linux 2.6.18-194.3.1.el5PAE   gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 and 4.4.2
+    #1 SMP i686 i686 i386         G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.93!) Apr 21 2010)
+    (jam)                         GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.1.2 20080704 
+                                      (Red Hat 4.1.2-48) and 4.4.2
+                                  PGI C, Fortran, C++ 10.4-0 32-bit
+                                  PGI C, Fortran, C++ 10.6-0 32-bit
+                                  Intel(R) C Compiler for 32-bit
+                                      applications, Version 11.1 
+                                  Intel(R) C++ Compiler for 32-bit
+                                      applications, Version 11.1
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler for 32-bit
+                                      applications, Version 11.1
+                                  Absoft 32-bit Fortran 95 10.0.7
+                                  MPICH mpich2-1.3.1 compiled with
+                                      gcc 4.1.2 and gfortran 4.1.2
+
+    Linux 2.6.18-194.17.1.el5     gcc 4.1.2 and 4.4.2
+    #1 SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux       G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.93!) Apr 21 2010)
+    (amani)                           tested for both 32- and 64-bit binaries
+                                  GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.1.2 20080704
+                                      (Red Hat 4.1.2-46) and 4.4.2
+                                  Intel(R) C, C++, Fortran Compilers for 
+                                      applications running on Intel(R) 64, 
+                                      Version 11.1.
+                                  PGI C, Fortran, C++ Version 9.0-4
+                                      for 64-bit target on x86-64
+                                  MPICH mpich2-1.3.1 compiled with
+                                      gcc 4.1.2 and gfortran 4.1.2
+
+    SGI ProPack 7 Linux           Intel(R) C++ Version 11.1 20100806
+    2.6.32.19-0.3.1.1982.0.PTF-   Intel(R) Fortran Version 11.1 20100806
+    default #1 SMP                SGI MPT 2.01
+    SGI Altix UV
+    (NCSA ember)
+
+    SunOS 5.10 32- and 64-bit     Sun C 5.9 Sun OS_sparc Patch 124867-16
+    (linew)                       Sun Fortran 95 8.3 Sun OS_sparc Patch 127000-13
+                                  Sun C++ 5.9 Sun OS_sparc Patch 124863-62
+                                  Sun C 5.10 SunOS_sparc Patch 141861-07
+                                  Sun Fortran 95 8.4 SunOS_sparc Patch 128231-06
+                                  Sun C++ 5.10 SunOS_sparc 128228-11
+
+    Intel Xeon Linux 2.6.18-      gcc 4.2.4
+    92.1.10.el5_lustre.1.6.6smp-  Intel(R) C++ Version 10.1.017
+    perfctr #8 SMP                Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 10.1.017
+    (NCSA abe)                    Open MPI 1.3.2
+                                  MVAPICH2-1.5.1_pgi-10.8
+
+    Windows XP                    Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 10.1 (project files)
+                                  Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 11.1 (cmake)
+                                  Visual Studio 2010 (cmake)
+                                  Cygwin(1.7.7 native gcc(4.3.4) compiler and gfortran)
+
+    Windows XP x64                Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 10.1 (project files)
+                                  Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 11.1 (cmake)
+                                  Visual Studio 2010 (cmake)
+                                  Cygwin(1.7.7 native gcc(4.3.4) compiler and gfortran)
+
+    Windows Vista                 Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 10.1 (project files)
+                                  Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 11.1 (cmake)
+
+    Windows Vista x64             Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 10.1 (project files)
+                                  Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 11.1 (cmake)
+
+    Windows 7                     Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 11.1 (cmake)
+
+    Windows 7 x64                 Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 11.1 (cmake)
+
+    Mac OS X 10.6.3 (Intel 64-bit) i686-apple-darwin10-gcc-4.2.1 (GCC) 4.2.1
+    Darwin Kernel Version 10.3.1  GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.5.0 20090910  
+                                  Intel C, C++ and Fortran compilers 11.1 20100806
+
+    Mac OS X 10.6.4 (Intel 32-bit) i686-apple-darwin10-gcc-4.2.1 (GCC) 4.2.1
+    Darwin Kernel Version 10.4.0  GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.6.0 20101106
+                                  Intel C, C++ and Fortran compilers 12.0.0 20101110
+
+    Mac OS X 10.6.4 (Intel 64-bit) i686-apple-darwin10-gcc-4.2.1 (GCC) 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5659)
+    Darwin Kernel Version 10.6.0   GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.5.0 20090910 
+                                   Intel C, C++ and Fortran compilers 11.1 20100806
+
+    Fedora 12 2.6.32.16-150.fc12.ppc64 #1 SMP ppc64 GNU/Linux
+                                  gcc (GCC) 4.4.4 20100630 (Red Hat 4.4.4-10)
+                                  GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.4.4 20100630 (Red Hat 4.4.4-10)
+
+    Debian5.06 2.6.26-2-686 #1 SMP i686 GNU/Linux
+                                  gcc (Debian 4.3.2-1.1) 4.3.2
+                                  GNU Fortran (Debian 4.3.2-1.1) 4.3.2
+
+    Debian5.06 2.6.26-2-amd64 #1 SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux
+                                  gcc (Debian 4.3.2-1.1) 4.3.2
+                                  GNU Fortran (Debian 4.3.2-1.1) 4.3.2
+
+    Fedora14 2.6.35.6-48.fc14.i686.PAE #1 SMP i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
+                                  gcc (GCC) 4.5.1 20100924 (Red Hat 4.5.1-4)
+                                  GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.5.1 20100924 (Red Hat 4.5.1-4)
+
+    Fedora14 2.6.35.6-48.fc14.x86_64 #1 SMP x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
+                                  gcc (GCC) 4.5.1 20100924 (Red Hat 4.5.1-4)
+                                  GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.5.1 20100924 (Red Hat 4.5.1-4)
+
+    SUSE 11.3 2.6.34.7-0.7-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
+                                  gcc (SUSE Linux) 4.5.0 20100604 [gcc-4_5-branch revision 160292]
+                                  GNU Fortran (SUSE Linux) 4.5.0 20100604 [gcc-4_5-branch revision 160292]
+
+    SUSE 11.3 2.6.34.7-0.7-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
+                                  gcc (SUSE Linux) 4.5.0 20100604 [gcc-4_5-branch revision 160292]
+                                  GNU Fortran (SUSE Linux) 4.5.0 20100604 [gcc-4_5-branch revision 160292]
+
+    Ubuntu 10.10 2.6.35-25-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP i686 GNU/Linux
+                                  gcc (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.4-14ubuntu5) 4.4.5
+                                  GNU Fortran (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.4-14ubuntu5) 4.4.5
+
+    Ubuntu 10.10 2.6.35-25-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux
+                                  gcc (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.4-14ubuntu5) 4.4.5
+                                  GNU Fortran (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.4-14ubuntu5) 4.4.5
+    
+    OpenVMS Alpha 8.3             HP C V7.3-009
+                                  HP Fortran V8.2-104679-48H9K
+                                  HP C++ V7.3-009
+
+Tested Configuration Features Summary
+========================================
+
+    In the tables below
+          y   = tested 
+          n   = not tested in this release
+          C   = Cluster
+          W   = Workstation
+          x   = not working in this release
+          dna = does not apply
+          ( ) = footnote appears below second table
+          <blank> = testing incomplete on this feature or platform 
+
+Platform                                 C        F90    F90      C++   zlib  SZIP
+                                         parallel        parallel
+Solaris2.10 32-bit                         n        y      n        y     y     y
+Solaris2.10 64-bit                         n        y      n        y     y     y
+Windows XP                                 n        y(4)   n        y     y     y
+Windows XP x64                             n        y(4)   n        y     y     y
+Windows Vista                              n        y(4)   n        y     y     y
+Windows Vista x64                          n        y(4)   n        y     y     y
+OpenVMS Alpha                              n        y      n        y     y     n
+Mac OS X 10.6 Intel                        n        y      n        y     y     y
+AIX 6.1 32- and 64-bit                     y        y      y        y     y     y
+FreeBSD 6.3-STABLE 32&64 bit               n        y      n        y     y     y
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.18-194 i686 GNU (1)W  y        y(2)   y        y     y     y
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.18-194 i686 Intel  W  n        y      n        y     y     n
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.18-194 i686 PGI    W  n        y      n        y     y     n
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 GNU (1)  W  y        y(3)   y        y     y     y
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 Intel    W  n        y      n        y     y     n
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 PGI      W  n        y      n        y     y     y
+RedHat EL4 2.6.18 Xeon Lustre           C  y        y      y        y     y     n
+Fedora 12 Linux 2.6.32.16-150.fc12.ppc64   n        y      n        y     y     y
+SGI Linux 2.6.32.19                        y        y      y        y     y     y
+
+
+Platform                                 Shared  Shared    Shared    Thread-  
+                                         C libs  F90 libs  C++ libs  safe     
+Solaris2.10 32-bit                         y       y         y         y        
+Solaris2.10 64-bit                         y       y         y         y        
+Windows XP                                 y       y(4)      y         n        
+Windows XP x64                             y       y(4)      y         n        
+Windows Vista                              y       y(4)      y         y
+Windows Vista x64                          y       y(4)      y         y
+OpenVMS Alpha                              n       n         n         n
+Mac OS X 10.6                              y(5)    n         y         n        
+AIX 6.1 32- and 64-bit                     n       n         n         y        
+FreeBSD 6.3-STABLE 32&64 bit               y       n         y         y        
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.18-128 i686 GNU (1)W  y       y(2)      y         y        
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.18-128 i686 Intel  W  y       y         y         n        
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.18-128 i686 PGI    W  y       y         y         n        
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 GNU (1)  W  y       y         y         y        
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 Intel    W  y       y         y         n        
+CentOS 5.5 Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 PGI      W  y       y         y         n        
+RedHat EL4 2.6.18 Xeon Lustre           C  y       y         y         n
+Fedora 12 Linux 2.6.32.16-150.fc12.ppc64   y       y         y         y 
+SGI Linux 2.6.32.19                        y       y         y         y 
+
+           (1) Fortran compiled with gfortran.
+           (2) With PGI and Absoft compilers.
+           (3) With PGI compiler for Fortran.
+           (4) Using Visual Studio 2008 w/ Intel Fortran 10.1 (Cygwin shared libraries are not supported)
+           (5) C and C++ shared libraries will not be built when Fortran is enabled.
+    Compiler versions for each platform are listed in the preceding
+    "Platforms Tested" table.
+
+
+Known Problems
+==============
+* examples/run-all-ex.sh does not work on Cygwin. (NAF - 2011/02/11)
+
+* Parallel test, t_shapesame in testpar, is rather unstable as it continues to
+  have occasional errors in AIX and quite often in NCSA Abe. It is being built
+  but it is not run automatically in the "make check" command. One would have to
+  run it by hand to see if it works in a particular machine. AKC - 2011/01/28
+
+* Although OpenVMS Alpha is supported, there are several problems with the C
+  test suite - getname.c, lheap.c, lheap.c, mtime.c, and stab.c.  The test
+  suite for h5diff also fails.  These failures are from the tests, not the
+  library.  We have fixed these failures.  But it's too late to put the fixes
+  into this release.  If you install the 1.8.6 library, it should still work
+  despite of these test failures.  If you want the working copy without any
+  test failure, you can request it from us.  SLU - 2011/01/26 
+
+* If parallel gmake (e.g., gmake -j 4) is used, the "gmake clean" command
+  sometimes fails in the perform directory due to the attempt to remove the
+  executable of h5perf or h5perf_serial by two "parallel" commands. This error
+  has no consequence on the functionality of the HDF5 library or install. It
+  is fixed in the next release. AKC - 2011/01/25
+
+* While working on the 1.8.6 release of HDF5, a bug was discovered that can
+  occur when reading from a dataset in parallel shortly after it has been
+  written to collectively. The issue was exposed by a new test in the parallel
+  HDF5 test suite, but had existed before that. We believe the problem lies with
+  certain MPI implementations and/or filesystems.
+
+  We have provided a pure MPI test program, as well as a standalone HDF5
+  program, that can be used to determine if this is an issue on your system.
+  They should be run across multiple nodes with a varying number of processes.
+  These programs can be found at:
+  http://www.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/examples/known_problems/
+
+* The h5diff tool can display garbage values when variable-length strings in 
+  a compound type dataset are compared. This also occurs with variable-length 
+  string arrays in a compound type dataset. See bug #1989. This will be fixed 
+  in the next release. JKM - 2010/11/05
+
+* The AIX --enable-shared setting does not quite work. It can produce a shared 
+  library, but there cannot be more than one shared library that is 
+  interlinked. This means that the high level APIs will not work which is not 
+  very useful. We hope to have a solution in the next release. 
+  (AKC - 2010/10/15)
+  
+* H5Eset_auto can cause a seg fault for a library API call if the application
+  compiles with -DH5_USE_16_API (see bug 1707).  It will be fixed in the 
+  next release. SLU - 2010/10/5
+  
+* The library's test dt_arith.c showed a compiler's rounding problem on 
+  Cygwin when converting an unsigned long long to a long double.  The 
+  library's own conversion works fine.  We defined a macro for Cygwin to 
+  skip this test until we can solve the problem.  Please see bug #1813. 
+  SLU - 2010/5/5
+  
+* All the VFL drivers aren't backwardly compatible.  In H5FDpublic.h, the 
+  structure H5FD_class_t changed in 1.8.  A new parameter was added to the 
+  get_eoa and set_eoa callback functions, and a new callback function 
+  get_type_map was added. The public function H5FDrealloc was taken out in 
+  1.8.  The problem only happens when users define their own driver for 1.6 
+  and try to plug in a 1.8 library. This will be fixed in 1.10. SLU - 2010/2/2
+
+* MinGW has a missing libstdc++.dll.a library file and will not successfully link
+  C++ applications/tests. Do not use the enable-cxx configure option. Read all of
+  the INSTALL_MINGW.txt file for all restrictions. ADB - 2009/11/11
+  
+* The PathScale MPI implementation, accessing a Panasas file system, would 
+  cause H5Fcreate() with H5F_ACC_EXCL to fail even when the file does not 
+  exist. This is due to the MPI_File_open() call failing if the amode has 
+  the MPI_MODE_EXCL bit set. (See bug 1468 for details.) AKC - 2009/8/11
+
+* Parallel tests failed with 16 processes with data inconsistency at testphdf5
+  / dataset_readAll. Parallel tests also failed with 32 and 64 processes with
+  collective abort of all ranks at t_posix_compliant / allwrite_allread_blocks
+  with MPI IO. CMC - 2009/04/28
+
+* For Red Storm, a Cray XT3 system, the tools/h5ls/testh5ls.sh and 
+  tools/h5copy/testh5copy.sh will fail some of their sub-tests. These 
+  sub-tests are expected to fail and should exit with a non-zero code but 
+  the yod command does not propagate the exit code of the executables. Yod 
+  always returns 0 if it can launch the executable.  The test suite shell 
+  expects a non-zero for this particular test. Therefore, it concludes the 
+  test has failed when it receives 0 from yod.  To skip all the "failing" 
+  tests for now, change them as shown below.
+  
+  ======== Original tools/h5ls/testh5ls.sh =========
+  TOOLTEST tgroup-1.ls 1 -w80 -r -g tgroup.h5
+  ======== Change to ===============================
+  echo SKIP TOOLTEST tgroup-1.ls 1 -w80 -r -g tgroup.h5
+  ==================================================
+
+  ======== Original tools/h5copy/testh5copy.sh =========
+  TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -v -s grp_dsets  -d grp_rename
+  TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -v -s grp_dsets  -d /grp_rename/grp_dsets
+  TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -vp -s /grp_dsets -d /E/F/grp_dsets
+  TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -vp -s /grp_nested -d /G/H/grp_nested
+  H5LSTEST $FILEOUT
+  ======== Change to ===============================
+  echo SKIP TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -v -s grp_dsets  -d grp_rename
+  echo SKIP TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -v -s grp_dsets  -d /grp_rename/grp_dsets
+  echo SKIP TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -vp -s /grp_dsets -d /E/F/grp_dsets
+  echo SKIP TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -vp -s /grp_nested -d /G/H/grp_nested
+  echo SKIP H5LSTEST $FILEOUT
+  ==================================================
+  AKC - 2008/11/10
+
+* For Red Storm, a Cray XT3 system, the yod command sometimes gives the 
+  message  "yod allocation delayed for node recovery."  This interferes 
+  with test suites that do not expect to see this message.  See the "Red Storm" 
+  section in file INSTALL_parallel for a way to deal with this problem. 
+  AKC - 2008/05/28
+  
+* On an Intel 64 Linux cluster (RH 4, Linux 2.6.9) with Intel 10.0 compilers, 
+  use the -mp -O1 compilation flags to build the libraries. A higher level 
+  of optimization causes failures in several HDF5 library tests.
+  
+* On mpich 1.2.5 and 1.2.6 on a system using four processors, if more than 
+  two processes contribute no I/O and the application asks to do collective 
+  I/O, we have found that a simple collective write will sometimes hang. This 
+  can be verified with the t_mpi test under testpar.
+  
+* A dataset created or rewritten with a v1.6.3 or later library cannot be 
+  read with the v1.6.2 or earlier library when the Fletcher32 EDC filter 
+  is enabled. There was a bug in the calculation of the Fletcher32 checksum 
+  in the library before v1.6.3; the checksum value was not consistent 
+  between big-endian and little-endian systems.  This bug was fixed in 
+  Release 1.6.3. However, after fixing the bug, the checksum value was no 
+  longer the same as before on little-endian system.  Library releases after 
+  1.6.4 can still read datasets created or rewritten with an HDF5 library of 
+  v1.6.2 or earlier. SLU - 2005/6/30
+  
+* On IBM AIX systems, parallel HDF5 mode will fail some tests with error 
+  messages like "INFO: 0031-XXX ...".  This is from the command `poe'. To 
+  work around this, set the environment variable MP_INFOLEVEL to 0 to 
+  minimize the messages and run the tests again. The tests may fail with 
+  messages like "The socket name is already in use", but HDF5 does not use 
+  sockets. This failure is due to problems with the poe command trying to 
+  set up the debug socket.  To resolve this problem, check to see whether 
+  there are any old /tmp/s.pedb.* files around. These are sockets used by 
+  the poe command and left behind if the command failed at some point. To 
+  resolve this, ask your system administrator to remove the 
+  old/tmp/s.pedb.* files, and then ask IBM to provide a means to run poe 
+  without the debug socket.
+
+* The --enable-static-exec configure flag will only statically link 
+  libraries if the static version of that library is present. If only the 
+  shared version of a library exists (i.e., most system libraries on 
+  Solaris, AIX, and Mac, for example, only have shared versions), the flag 
+  should still result in a successful compilation, but note that the 
+  installed executables will not be fully static. Thus, the only guarantee 
+  on these systems is that the executable is statically linked with just 
+  the HDF5 library.
+  
+* On an SGI Altix SMP ia64 system, the Intel compiler version 10.1 (which 
+  is the default on that system) does not work properly and results in 
+  failures during the make check (in a static build) and the make 
+  installcheck (in a shared build). This appears to be a compiler 
+  optimization problem. Reducing the optimization by setting CFLAGS to 
+  -O1 or below resolves the issue. Using a newer version of the compiler 
+  (11.0) avoids the issue. MAM - 2010/06/01
+  
+* On solaris systems, when running the examples with the scripts installed in
+  .../share/hdf5_examples, two of the c tests, h5_extlink and h5_elink_unix2win 
+  may fail or generate HDF5 errors because the script commands in c/run-c-ex.sh 
+  fail to create test directories red, blue, and u2w.  Moving the '!' in lines 
+  67, 70, 73 of run-c-ex.sh will fix the problem.  For example the script command 
+  "if ! test -d red; then" will work on solaris if changed to 
+  "if test ! -d red; then".
 
 
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