[svn-r15105] Maintenance: Modified version to 1.8.1-snap0, and updated HISTORY-1_8.txt and RELEASE.txt

             for the further development in the branch.

1 files changed, 586 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/release_docs/HISTORY-1_8.txt b/release_docs/HISTORY-1_8.txt
index 7bae875..2695802 100644
--- a/release_docs/HISTORY-1_8.txt
+++ b/release_docs/HISTORY-1_8.txt
@@ -3,10 +3,596 @@ HDF5 History
 
 This file contains development history of HDF5 1.8 branch
 
+2.      Release Information for hdf5-1.8.1
 1.      Release Information for hdf5-1.8.0
 
 [Search on the string '%%%%' for per-release section breaks.]
 
+
+%%%%1.8.1%%%%   
+
+
+HDF5 version 1.8.1 released on Thu May 29 15:28:55 CDT 2008
+================================================================================
+
+INTRODUCTION
+============
+
+This document describes the differences between the HDF5-1.8.1 release 
+and HDF5 1.8.0, and contains information on the platforms tested and known 
+problems in HDF5-1.8.1.  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 1.8.1 source code, documentation, and additional materials
+can be found on the HDF5 web page at:
+
+     http://www.hdfgroup.org/products/hdf5/
+
+The HDF5 1.8.1 release can be obtained from:
+
+     http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/release/obtain5.html
+
+User documentation for 1.8.1 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 1.8.1 (current 
+release) versus Release 1.8.0":
+
+     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 and languages
+- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.8.0
+- Platforms Tested
+- Supported Configuration Features Summary
+- Known Problems
+
+
+New Features
+============
+
+        Configuration
+        -------------
+        - The lib/libhdf5.settings file contains much more configure
+          information. (AKC - 2008/05/18)
+
+        - The new configure option "--disable-sharedlib-rpath" disables 
+          embedding the '-Wl,-rpath' information into executables when 
+          shared libraries are produced, and instead solely relies on the 
+          information in LD_LIBRARY_PATH. (MAM - 2008/05/15)
+
+        - Configuration suite now uses Autoconf 2.61, Automake 1.10.1, and 
+          Libtool 2.2.2 (MAM - 2008/05/01)
+
+        Source code distribution
+        ========================
+
+        Library
+        -------
+        - None
+
+        Parallel Library
+        ----------------
+        - None
+
+        Tools
+        -----
+        - h5repack: Reinstated the -i and -o command line flags to specify 
+          input and output files.  h5repack now understands both the old
+          syntax (with -i and -o) and the new syntax introduced in Release
+          1.8.0.  (PVN - 2008/05/23)
+        - h5dump: Added support for external links, displaying the object that 
+          an external link points to. (PVN - 2008/05/12)
+        - h5dump: Added an option, -m, to allow user-defined formatting in the 
+          output of floating point numbers. (PVN - 2008/05/06)
+        - h5dump, in output of the -p option: Added effective data compression 
+          ratio to the dataset storage layout output when a compression filter 
+          has been applied to a dataset.  (PVN - 2008/05/01)
+
+        F90 API
+        ------
+        New H5A, H5G, H5L, H5O, and H5P APIs to enable 1.8 features were
+        added. See "Release 1.8.1 (current release) versus Release 1.8.0" in 
+        the document "HDF5 Software Changes from Release to Release"
+        (http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/ADGuide/Changes.html) for the 
+        complete list of the new APIs.
+
+        C++ API
+        ------
+        - None
+
+
+Support for New Platforms, Languages, and Compilers
+===================================================
+        - Both serial and parallel HDF5 are supported for the Red Storm machine 
+          which is a Cray XT3 system.
+
+        - The Fortran library will work correctly if compiled with the -i8 
+          flag.  This has been tested with the g95, PGI and Intel Fortran 
+          compilers.
+
+
+Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.8.0 
+==========================
+
+        Configuration
+        -------------
+        - None
+
+        Source code distribution
+        ========================
+
+        Library
+        -------
+        - Chunking:  Chunks greater than 4GB are disallowed. 
+          (QAK - 2008/05/16)
+        - Fixed the problem with searching for a target file when following 
+          an external link.  The search pattern will depend on whether the 
+          target file's pathname is an absolute or a relative path. 
+          Please see the H5Lcreate_external description in the "HDF5 
+          Reference Manual" (http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/RM/RM_H5L.html).
+          (VC - 2008/04/08)
+        - Fixed possible file corruption bug when encoding datatype
+          descriptions for compound datatypes whose size was between
+          256 and 511 bytes and the file was opened with the "use the
+          latest format" property enabled (with H5Pset_libver_bounds).
+          (QAK - 2008/03/13)
+        - Fixed bug in H5Aget_num_attrs() routine to correctly handle an 
+          invalid location identifier.  (QAK - 2008/03/11)
+
+        Parallel Library
+        ----------------
+        - None
+
+        Tools
+        -----
+        - Fixed bug in h5diff that prevented datasets and attributes with
+          variable-length string elements from comparing correctly.
+          (QAK - 2008/02/28)
+        - Fixed bug in h5dump that caused binary output to be made only for 
+          the first dataset, when several datasets were requested.
+          (PVN - 2008/04/07)
+
+        F90 API
+        ------
+        - The h5tset(get)_fields subroutines were missing the parameter to 
+          specify a sign position; fixed.  (EIP - 2008/05/23)
+        - Many APIs were fixed to work with the 8-byte integers in Fortran vs.
+          4-byte integers in C. This change is trasparent to user applications.
+
+        C++ API
+        ------
+        - The class hierarchy was revised to address the problem reported
+          in bugzilla #1068, Attribute should not be derived from base
+          class H5Object.  Classes AbstractDS was moved out of H5Object.
+          Class Attribute now multiply inherits from IdComponent and
+          AbstractDs and class DataSet from H5Object and AbstractDs.
+          In addition, data member IdComponent::id was moved into subclasses:
+          Attribute, DataSet, DataSpace, DataType, H5File, Group, and PropList.
+          (BMR - 2008/05/20)
+	- IdComponent::dereference was incorrect; it was changed from:
+		void IdComponent::dereference(IdComponent& obj, void* ref)
+	  to:
+		void H5Object::dereference(H5File& h5file, void* ref)
+		void H5Object::dereference(H5Object& obj, void* ref)
+	  (BMR - 2008/05/20)
+        - Revised Attribute::write and Attribute::read wrappers to handle
+          memory allocation/deallocation properly. (bugzilla 1045)
+          (BMR - 2008/05/20)
+
+
+Platforms Tested
+================
+The following platforms and compilers have been tested for this release.
+
+    Cray XT3 (2.0.41)             cc (pgcc) 7.1-4
+    (red storm)                   ftn (pgf90) 7.1-4
+				  CC (pgCC) 7.1-4
+                                  mpicc 1.0.2
+                                  mpif90 1.0.2
+
+    FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE i386       gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
+    (duty)                        g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
+                                  gcc 4.2.1 20080123
+                                  g++ 4.2.1 20080123
+                                  gfortran 4.2.1 20070620
+
+    FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE amd64      gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
+    (liberty)                     g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
+                                  gcc 4.2.1 20080123
+                                  g++ 4.2.1 20080123
+                                  gfortran 4.2.1 20080123
+
+    IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.4.4m
+                                  F90 MIPSpro 7.4.4m 
+                                  C++ MIPSpro cc 7.4.4m
+
+    Linux 2.6.9 (RHEL4)           Intel 10.0 compilers
+    (abe.ncsa.uiuc.edu)
+
+    Linux 2.4.21-47               gcc 3.2.3 20030502
+    (osage)
+
+    Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10           gcc,g++ 3.4.6 20060404, G95 (GCC 4.0.3) 
+    (kagiso)                      PGI 7.1-6 (pgcc, pgf90, pgCC)
+                                  Intel 9.1 (icc, ifort, icpc)
+
+    Linux 2.6.16.27 x86_64 AMD    gcc 4.1.0 (SuSE Linux), g++ 4.1.0, 
+    (smirom)                          g95 (GCC 4.0.3)
+                                  PGI 7.1-6 (pgcc, pgf90, pgCC)
+                                  Intel 9.1 (icc, ifort, icpc)
+
+    Linux 2.6.5-7.252.1-rtgfx #1  Intel(R) C++ Version 9.0
+          SMP ia64                Intel(R) Fortran Itanium(R) Version 9.0 
+    (cobalt)                      SGI MPI
+
+    SunOS 5.8 32,46               Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C 5.3
+     (Solaris 2.8)                Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 Fortran 95 6.2
+                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C++ 5.3
+
+    SunOS 5.10                    cc: Sun C 5.8 
+    (linew)                       f90: Sun Fortran 95 8.2 
+                                  CC: Sun C++ 5.8 
+
+    Xeon Linux 2.4.21-32.0.1.ELsmp-perfctr-lustre
+    (tungsten)                    gcc 3.2.2 20030222
+                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 9.0
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 9.0
+
+    IA-64 Linux 2.4.21.SuSE_309.tg1 ia64
+    (NCSA tg-login)               gcc 3.2.2
+                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 8.1
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 8.1
+                                  mpich-gm-1.2.6..14b-intel-r2
+
+    Intel 64 Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10.EL_lustre-1.4.10.1smp
+    (abe)                         gcc 3.4.6 20060404
+                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 10.0
+                                  Intel (R) Fortran Compiler Version 10.0
+                                  mvapich2-0.9.8p2patched-intel-ofed-1.2
+
+    Windows XP                    Visual Studio .NET
+                                  Visual Studio 2005 w/ Intel Fortran 9.1
+                                  Cygwin(native gcc compiler and g95)
+                                  MinGW(native gcc compiler and g95)
+
+    Windows XP x64                Visual Studio 2005 w/ Intel Fortran 9.1
+
+    Windows Vista                 Visual Studio 2005
+
+    MAC OS  10.5.2 (Intel)        i686-apple-darwin9-gcc-4.0.1 (GCC) 4.0.1
+                                  GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.3.0 20070810
+                                  G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.91!) Apr 24 2008)
+
+
+Supported Configuration Features Summary
+========================================
+
+    In the tables below
+          y   = tested and supported
+          n   = not supported or not tested in this release
+          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
+SunOS5.10 64-bit         n        y      n        y     y     y
+SunOS5.10 32-bit         n        y      n        y     y     y
+IRIX64_6.5 64-bit        n        y      y        y     y     y
+IRIX64_6.5 32-bit        n        n      n        n     y     y
+Windows XP               n        y(15)  n(15)    y     y     y
+Windows XP x64           n        y(15)  n(15)    y     y     y
+Windows Vista            n        n      n        y     y     y
+Mac OS X 10.5 Intel      n        y      n        y     y     y
+FreeBSD 4.11             n        n      n        y     y     y
+RedHat EL3  W       (3)  y(1)     y(10)  y(1)     y     y     y
+RedHat EL3  W Intel (3)  n        y      n        y     y     n
+RedHat EL3  W PGI   (3)  n        y      n        y     y     n
+SuSe x86_64 gcc  (3,12)  y(2)     y(11)  y(2)     y     y     y
+SuSe x86_64 Int  (3,12)  n        y(13)  n        y     y     n
+SuSe x86_64 PGI  (3,12)  n        y(8)   n        y     y     y
+Linux 2.4 Xeon C 
+    Lustre Intel  (3,6)  n        y      n        y     y     n
+Linux 2.6 SuSE ia64 C 
+    Intel         (3,7)  y        y      y        y     y     n
+Linux 2.6 SGI Altix 
+    ia64 Intel      (3)  y        y      y        y     y     y
+Linux 2.6 RHEL C
+    Lustre Intel    (5)  y(4)     y      y(4)     y     y     n
+Cray XT3 2.0.41          y        y      y        y     y     n
+
+
+Platform                 Shared  Shared    Shared    Thread-  
+                         C libs  F90 libs  C++ libs  safe     
+Solaris2.10 64-bit       y       y         y         y        
+Solaris2.10 32-bit       y       y         y         y        
+IRIX64_6.5 64-bit        y       y         n         y        
+IRIX64_6.5 32-bit        y       dna       y         y        
+Windows XP               y       y(15)     y         y        
+Windows XP x64           y       y(15)     y         y        
+Windows Vista            y       n         n         y        
+Mac OS X 10.3            y                           n        
+FreeBSD 4.11             y       n         y         y        
+RedHat EL3  W       (3)  y       y(10)     y         y        
+RedHat EL3  W Intel (3)  y       y         y         n        
+RedHat EL3  W PGI   (3)  y       y         y         n        
+SuSe x86_64 W GNU (3,12) y       y         y         y        
+SuSe x86_64 W Int (3,12) y       y         y         n        
+SuSe x86_64 W PGI (3,12) y       y         y         n        
+Linux 2.4 Xeon C 
+    Lustre Intel    (6)  y       y         y         n        
+Linux 2.4 SuSE 
+    ia64 C Intel    (7)  y       y         y         n        
+Linux 2.4 SGI Altix 
+    ia64 Intel           y                           n        
+Linux 2.6 RHEL C
+    Lustre Intel    (5)  y        y        y         n
+Cray XT3 2.0.41          n       n         n         n        n
+
+    Notes: (1)  Using mpich2 1.0.6.
+           (2)  Using mpich2 1.0.7.
+           (3)  Linux 2.6 with GNU, Intel, and PGI compilers, as indicated.  
+                  W or C indicates workstation or cluster, respectively.
+           (4)  Using mvapich2 0.9.8.
+           (5)  Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10.  Xeon cluster with ELsmp_perfctr_lustre 
+                  and Intel compilers
+           (6)  Linux 2.4.21-32.0.1.  Xeon cluster with ELsmp_perfctr_lustre 
+                  and Intel compilers
+           (7)  Linux 2.4.21, SuSE_292.till.  Ia64 cluster with Intel compilers
+           (8)  pgf90
+           (9)  With Compaq Visual Fortran 6.6c compiler.
+           (10) With PGI and Absoft compilers.
+           (11) PGI and Intel compilers for both C and Fortran
+           (12) AMD Opteron x86_64
+           (13) ifort
+           (14) Yes with C and Fortran, but not with C++
+           (15) Using Visual Studio 2005 or Cygwin
+           (16) Not tested for this release.
+    Compiler versions for each platform are listed in the preceding
+    "Platforms Tested" table.
+
+
+Known Problems
+==============
+* 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 seeing this message.  See the section of "Red
+  Storm" in file INSTALL_parallel for a way to deal with this problem.
+  AKC - 2008/05/28
+
+* For Red Storm, a Cray XT3 system, the tools/h5ls/testh5ls.sh will fail on
+  the test "Testing h5ls -w80 -r -g tgroup.h5" fails.  This test is
+  expected to fail and 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 bypass this problem for now, change the following
+  lines in the tools/h5ls/testh5ls.sh.
+  ======== Original =========
+  # The following combination of arguments is expected to return an error message
+  # and return value 1
+  TOOLTEST tgroup-1.ls 1 -w80 -r -g tgroup.h5
+  ======== Skip the test =========
+  echo SKIP TOOLTEST tgroup-1.ls 1 -w80 -r -g tgroup.h5
+  ======== end of bypass ========
+  AKC - 2008/05/28
+
+* We have discovered two problems when running collective IO parallel HDF5 
+  tests with chunking storage on the ChaMPIon MPI compiler on tungsten, a 
+  Linux cluster at NCSA.
+
+  Under some complex selection cases: 
+  1) MPI_Get_element returns the wrong value.
+  2) MPI_Type_struct also generates the wrong derived datatype and corrupt 
+     data may be generated.
+  These issues arise only when turning on collective IO with chunking storage 
+  with some complex selections. We have not found these problems on other 
+  MPI-IO compilers. If you encounter these problems, you may use independent 
+  IO instead.
+
+  To avoid this behavior, change the following line in your code
+      H5Pset_dxpl_mpio(xfer_plist, H5FD_MPIO_COLLECTIVE);
+  to
+      H5Pset_dxpl_mpio(xfer_plist, H5FD_MPIO_INDEPENDENT);
+
+  KY - 2007/08/24
+
+* For SNL, spirit/liberty/thunderbird: The serial tests pass but parallel
+  tests failed with MPI-IO file locking message. AKC - 2007/6/25
+
+* On Intel 64 Linux cluster (RH 4, Linux 2.6.9) with Intel 10.0 compilers, 
+  use -mp -O1 compilation flags to build the libraries. A higher level of 
+  optimization causes failures in several HDF5 library tests. 
+
+* For LLNL, uP: both serial and parallel tests pass.  
+  Zeus: Serial tests pass but parallel tests fail with a known problem in MPI.
+  ubgl: Serial tests pass but parallel tests fail. 
+
+* Configuring with --enable-debug=all produces compiler errors on most
+  platforms:  Users who want to run HDF5 in debug mode should use
+  --enable-debug rather than --enable-debug=all to enable debugging
+  information on most modules.
+
+* On Mac OS 10.4, test/dt_arith.c has some errors in conversion from long
+  double to (unsigned) long long and from (unsigned) long long to long double. 
+
+* On Altix SGI with Intel 9.0, testmeta.c would not compile with -O3
+  optimization flag.
+
+* On VAX, the Scaleoffset filter is not supported.  The Scaleoffset filter 
+  supports only the IEEE standard for floating-point data; it cannot be applied 
+  to HDF5 data generated on VAX. 
+
+* On Cray X1, a lone colon on the command line of h5dump --xml (as in
+  the testh5dumpxml.sh script) is misinterpereted by the operating system
+  and causes an error.
+
+* On mpich 1.2.5 and 1.2.6, if more than two processes contribute no IO and 
+  the application asks to do collective IO, we have found that when using 4 
+  processors, a simple collective write will sometimes be hung. This can be 
+  verified with t_mpi test under testpar.
+
+* On IRIX6.5, when the C compiler version is greater than 7.4, complicated
+  MPI derived datatype code will work. However, the user should increase
+  the value of the MPI_TYPE_MAX environment variable to some appropriate value 
+  to use collective irregular selection code.  For example, the current 
+  parallel HDF5 test needs to raise MPI_TYPE_MAX to 200,000 to pass the test. 
+
+* A dataset created or rewritten with a v1.6.3 library or after cannot be read 
+  with the v1.6.2 library or before 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 before.  
+  SLU - 2005/6/30
+
+* For version 6 (6.02 and 6.04) of the Portland Group compiler on the AMD 
+  Opteron processor, there is a bug in the compiler for optimization(-O2).  
+  The library failed in several tests, all related to the MULTI driver.  
+  The problem has been reported to the vendor.  
+
+* On IBM AIX systems, parallel HDF5 mode will fail some tests with error
+  messages like "INFO: 0031-XXX ...".  This is from the command `poe'.
+  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 many old /tmp/s.pedb.* files staying around.  
+  These are sockets used by the poe command and left behind due to failed 
+  commands.  First, ask your system administrator to clean them out.  
+  Lastly, request IBM to provide a means to run poe without the debug socket.
+
+* The --enable-static-exec configure flag fails to compile for Solaris
+  platforms. This is due to the fact that not all of the system libraries on 
+  Solaris are available in a static format.
+
+  The --enable-static-exec configure flag also fails to correctly compile
+  on IBM SP2 platforms for serial mode. The parallel mode works fine with 
+  this option.
+  
+  It is suggested that you do not use this option on these platforms
+  during configuration.
+
+* With the gcc 2.95.2 compiler, HDF5 uses the `-ansi' flag during
+  compilation. The ANSI version of the compiler complains about not being
+  able to handle the `long long' datatype with the warning:
+
+        warning: ANSI C does not support `long long'
+  
+  This warning is innocuous and can be safely ignored.
+
+* The ./dsets tests fail on the TFLOPS machine if the test program,
+  dsets.c, is compiled with the -O option.  The HDF5 library still works
+  correctly with the -O option.  The test program works fine if it is
+  compiled with -O1 or -O0.  Only -O (same as -O2) causes the test
+  program to fail.
+
+* Not all platforms behave correctly with Szip's shared libraries. Szip is
+  disabled in these cases, and a message is relayed at configure time. Static
+  libraries should be working on all systems that support Szip and should be
+  used when shared libraries are unavailable. 
+
+  There is also a configure error on Altix machines that incorrectly reports 
+  when a version of Szip without an encoder is being used.
+
+* On some platforms that use Intel and Absoft compilers to build the HDF5 
+  Fortran library, compilation may fail for fortranlib_test.f90, fflush1.f90 
+  and fflush2.f90 complaining about the exit subroutine. Comment out the line 
+  IF (total_error .ne. 0) CALL exit (total_error).
+
+* Information about building with PGI and Intel compilers is available in
+  the INSTALL file sections 4.7 and 4.8.
+
+* On at least one system, SDSC DataStar, the scheduler (in this case
+  LoadLeveler) sends job status updates to standard error when you run 
+  any executable that was compiled with the parallel compilers.
+
+  This causes problems when running "make check" on parallel builds, as 
+  many of the tool tests function by saving the output from test runs,
+  and comparing it to an exemplar.  
+
+  The best solution is to reconfigure the target system so it no longer
+  inserts the extra text.  However, this may not be practical.
+
+  In such cases, one solution is to "setenv HDF5_Make_Ignore yes" prior to 
+  the configure and build.  This will cause "make check" to continue after 
+  detecting errors in the tool tests.  However, in the case of SDSC DataStar,
+  it also leaves you with some 150 "failed" tests to examine by hand.
+
+  A second solution is to write a script to run serial tests and filter
+  out the text added by the scheduler.  A sample script used on SDSC
+  DataStar is given below, but you will probably have to customize it 
+  for your installation.  
+
+  Observe that the basic idea is to insert the script as the first item 
+  on the command line which executes the the test.  The script then 
+  executes the test and filters out the offending text before passing
+  it on.
+
+        #!/bin/csh
+
+        set STDOUT_FILE=~/bin/serial_filter.stdout
+        set STDERR_FILE=~/bin/serial_filter.stderr
+
+        rm -f $STDOUT_FILE $STDERR_FILE
+
+        ($* > $STDOUT_FILE) >& $STDERR_FILE
+
+        set RETURN_VALUE=$status
+
+        cat $STDOUT_FILE
+
+        tail +3 $STDERR_FILE
+
+        exit $RETURN_VALUE
+
+  You get the HDF5 make files and test scipts to execute your filter script
+  by setting the environment variable "RUNSERIAL" to the full path of the 
+  script prior to running configure for parallel builds.  Remember to 
+  "unsetenv RUNSERIAL" before running configure for a serial build.
+
+  Note that the RUNSERIAL environment variable exists so that we can 
+  prefix serial runs as necessary on the target system.  On DataStar,
+  no prefix is necessary.  However on an MPICH system, the prefix might
+  have to be set to something like "/usr/local/mpi/bin/mpirun -np 1" to
+  get the serial tests to run at all.
+
+  In such cases, you will have to include the regular prefix in your
+  filter script.
+
+* H5Ocopy() does not copy reg_ref attributes correctly when shared-message
+  is turn on. The value of the reference in the destination attriubte is
+  wrong. This H5Ocopy problem will affect the h5copy tool.
+
+* In the C++ API, it appears that there are bugs in Attribute::write/read
+  and DataSet::write/read for fixed- and variable-len strings.  The problems
+  are being worked on and a patch will be provided when the fixes are
+  available.
+
+
 %%%%1.8.0%%%%