[svn-r14903] Undoing change committed in r14902.

8 files changed, 3410 insertions, 1743 deletions

diff --git a/release_docs/HISTORY.txt b/release_docs/HISTORY-1_0-1_8_0_rc3.txt
index 1327827..964d374 100644
--- a/release_docs/HISTORY.txt
+++ b/release_docs/HISTORY-1_0-1_8_0_rc3.txt
@@ -1,9 +1,14 @@
 HDF5 HISTORY
 ============
-This file contains history of the HDF5 libraries releases
+This file contains history of the HDF5 libraries releases starting with
+HDF5-1.0.0 and ending with HDF5-1.8.0-rc3 (the state of the code before i
+the HDF5 1.8.0 release).
 
 CONTENTS
 
+22.     Changes from 1.6.0 to 1.8.0-rc3
+21.     Release Information for hdf5-1.6.7
+20.     Release Information for hdf5-1.6.6
 19.     Release Information for hdf5-1.6.5
 18.     Release Information for hdf5-1.6.4
 17.     Release Information for hdf5-1.6.3
@@ -27,6 +32,2549 @@ CONTENTS
 
 [Search on the string '%%%%' for per-release section breaks.]
 
+%%%%1.8.0-rc3%%%%   Changes from 1.6.0 to 1.8.0-rc3
+
+
+HDF5 version 1.8.0-rc3 
+================================================================================
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.6.* and
+Hdf5 1.8.0 release candidate "HDF5-1.8.0-rc3", and contains information 
+on the platforms tested and known problems in HDF5-1.8.0-rc3. 
+For more details check the HISTORY.txt file in the HDF5 source.
+
+
+Links to HDF5 1.8.0-rc3 source code, documentation, and additional materials
+can be found on THG's development server (www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu) at the
+following location:
+     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/release/beta/obtain518.html
+User documentation for the beta can be accessed directly at this location: 
+     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_1.8pre/doc/
+
+New features of the upcoming 1.8.0 release are described in
+the "What's New in 1.8.0?" document:
+     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_1.8pre/WhatsNew180.html
+
+New and modified APIs are described briefly in
+     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_1.8pre/WhatsNew180.html
+and will be listed in the "HDF5 Software Changes" document:
+     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_1.8pre/doc/ADGuide/Changes.html
+
+
+
+For more information, see the HDF5 home page:
+   
+    http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/
+
+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 HDF5-1.6.0
+- Platforms Tested
+- Known Problems
+
+
+New Features
+============
+
+    Configuration:
+    --------------
+        - Removed stream-vfd from the HDF5 library. - AKC 2007/11/19.
+        - Updated versions of autotools. HDF5 now uses automake 1.10.0, 
+          autoconf 2.61, and libtool 1.5.22. MAM - 2007/7/25.
+        - Changed default fortran compiler to g95 when gcc is used. - AKC
+          2007/2/17.
+        - 'make check-vfd' can now be run from the top level directory. Not all
+          tests that 'make check' invokes work with certain Virtual File Drivers,
+          so those tests have been skipped. - MAM 2006/7/17  
+        - Added the variable HDF5TestExpress to control how long tests run.
+          Setting it to a value between 0 and 3 controls how thoroughly the
+          library is tested, with 0 being an "exhaustive run" and 3 being a
+          very quick "smoke test."  1 (a "full run") is the default.
+          -JML 2006/6/21
+        - If both shared and static libraries are installed, now both will be
+          tested during 'make install'. -MAM 2006/06/21
+        - Added support to explicity enable stream_vfd or shared libraries
+          when using parallel via the '--enable-stream_vfd' and
+          '--enable-shared' options, respectively. If not explicity defined, 
+          These settings default to enabled when parallel is not used, 
+          and disabled when parallel is used. -MAM 2006/06/17
+        - Remove the flexible parallel code and the --enable-fphdf5
+          configure option, it was never up to production standards
+          anyway.  -QAK 2006/4/20
+        - Added a macro hdf5_mpi_special_collective_io_works to filter out
+          some mpi-io packages that don't support collective IO for no IO
+          contributions in some processes. -KY 2006/2/16
+	- Added -shlib option to link against installed shared libraries to
+	  h5c++ and h5fc.  -JML 2005/11/1
+	- Added --enable-build-all option to configure, which only developers
+	  should need to use.  -JML 2005/10/24
+	- Configure uses the 'TR' variable to let the user override the path
+          to the 'tr' utility. -JML 2005/10/17
+	- Configure can recognize -lmpich as a form of MPI library. -AKC-
+	  2005/9/28.
+        - MD5 checksumming has been added to snapshot releases.  Release
+          tarballs will be accompanied by .md5 checksum files, which can
+          be verified using the md5sum utility.  -JML 2005/9/6
+        - Some configure flags are incompatible (e.g., the C++ APIs cannot
+          be built using the parallel version of HDF5).  configure will now
+          output errors when some common incompatible features are used
+          together.  -JML 2005/9/6
+        - A new API function, H5Tis_hard(), was added to the library.  It
+          checks if a conversion function is a compiler (hard) conversion.
+          SLU - 2005/9/6
+	- t_mpi will run the test_mpio_derived_dtype by default unless it is
+	  known not working (indicated by macro H5_MPI_COMPLEX_DERIVED_DATATYPE_WORKS
+	  not defined.)  -AKC- 2005/8/23.
+	- Test execution has changed in a number of ways:
+	  When make is invoked in parallel (using -j), sequential tests
+	  are now executed as parallel make targets.  This should make them
+	  finish more quickly on machines with multiple processors.
+	  Since test output is garbled when they are executed by parallel make,
+	  tests now dump their output to foo.log files and foo.logsh files
+	  (for test scripts).  These logs are printed to the screen only
+	  when a test fails or when all tests in the current directory have
+	  completed successfully.
+	  When tests pass, they will create a foo.chkexe file.
+	  This prevents the test from executing again until the test or
+	  main library changes.
+	  All files generated by tests (*.chkexe, *.log, and any *.h5 files
+	  created) can be removed by invoking 'make check-clean'.
+	  Sequential and parallel library tests can now be invoked separately.
+	  'make check-s' will execute only sequential tests, and 'make check-p'
+	  will execute only parallel tests.  'make check' will still execute
+	  all tests.
+	    -JML 2005/08/03
+        - On windows, all.zip is deprecated. users should
+             read INSTALL_Windows.txt to know the details.
+             Reasons to deprecate all.zip:
+		1. Avoid confliction for windows programmers
+                2. Decrease size of CVS tree by adding all.zip
+	        3. Avoid using winzip as the intermediate step
+             --KY 2005/04/22
+	- When HDF5 is created as a shared library, it now uses libtool's
+	  shared library versioning scheme. -JML 2005/04/18
+	- HDF5 now uses automake 1.9.5 to generate Makefiles.in.
+	  This has a number of effects on users:
+          The Fortran compiler should be set using the environment
+          variable $FC, not $F9X.  F9X still works, but is depreciated.
+	  The output of make may be different.  This should be only a
+          cosmetic effect.
+	  make depened (or make dep) is no longer recognized, since automake
+	  handles dependency tracking.
+	  Some new configure options exist.  --enable-dependency-tracking
+          and --disable-dependency-tracking are used to control automake's
+	  dependency tracking.  Dependencies are on by default *on most
+	  platforms and compilers*.  If --enable-dependency-tracking is
+	  used, they will be enabled on any platform.  However, this can
+	  slow down builds or even cause build errors in some cases.
+	  Likewise, --disable-dependency-tracking can speed up builds and
+	  avoid some build errors.
+	  Some make targets have alternate names.  make check-install and
+	  make installcheck do the same thing, for instance.
+	  pmake on IRIX can be invoked from the root directory, but the
+	  -V flag must be used to invoke it in any subdirectory or it
+	  will give an error about undefined variables.
+	  JML 2005/01 - 2005/03
+        - Hardware conversion between long double and integers is also added.
+          SLU 2005/02/10
+        - Started to support software conversion between long double and 
+          integers.  Hardware conversion will come very soon.  SLU - 2005/1/6
+	- Intel v8.0 compiler would infinite loop when compiling some test
+	  code with -O3 option.  Changed enable-production default compiler
+	  option to -O2. AKC - 2004/12/06
+	- Long double is assumed to be a supported C data type.  It is a
+	  stanadard C89 type. AKC - 2004/10/22
+	- The IA64 will use ecc as the C++ compiler by default.
+        - Added some initial support for making valgrind/Purify (or similar
+            memory checking products) happier by initializing buffers to zero
+            and disabling the internal free list code.  To take advantage of
+            this, use the "--enable-using-memchecker" configure option when
+            building the library.  QAK - 2004/07/23
+        - Fixed the long compile time of H5detect.c when v7.x Intel Compiler
+	    is used with optimization NOT off.  AKC - 2004/05/20
+	- Fixed configure setting of C++ for OSF1 platform. AKC - 2004/01/06
+        - Prefix default is changed from /usr/local to `pwd`/hdf5.
+            AKC - 2003/07/09
+
+    Library:
+    --------
+       - Removed size restrictions on attributes, when using the "latest"
+            version of the file format. - QAK - 2007/02/21
+       - Relaxed restrictions on attribute operations to allow a file ID to
+            be used as the "location ID".  If a file ID is used, the attribute
+            operation will occur on the root group of the file.
+            - QAK - 2007/02/09
+       - Enabled the CORE driver to read an existing file depending on 
+            the setting of the backing_store for H5Pset_fapl_core and file 
+            open flags. - SLU - 2006/11/30
+       - Added new H5Gget_info_by_idx() routine to query the information about
+            a group according to the order within an index.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/27
+       - Added new H5Gget_info() routine to query the information about a
+            group by name.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/27
+       - Added new H5Oget_info_by_idx() routine to query the information about
+            an object in a group according to the order within an index.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/26
+       - Added new H5Oget_info() routine to query the information about an
+            object in a group by name.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/26
+       - Added new H5Oopen_by_idx() routine to open an object in a group
+            according to the order within an index.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/20
+       - Added new H5Literate() routine to iterate over links in a group
+            according to the order within an index.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/20
+       - Added new H5Ldelete_by_idx() routine to delete a link according to
+            the order within an index.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/13
+       - Added new H5Lget_val_by_idx() routine to query the value of a soft link
+            according to the order within an index.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/13
+       - Added new H5Lget_name_by_idx() routine to query the name of a link
+            according to the order within an index.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/12
+       - Added new H5Rget_name() routine to determine the name of the object
+            that a reference points to, as long as the object is still
+            reachable in the group hierarchy.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/10
+       - Added new H5Lget_info_by_idx() routine to query the link information
+            according to the order within an index.
+            - QAK - 2006/11/10
+       - Added feature to H5Iget_name to allow retrieving the name of any
+            object's ID, as long as the object is still reachable in the
+            group hierarchy.
+            - LA - 2006/11/01
+       - Added External and User-defined links.
+            External links are links from one HDF5 file to another; they
+            require both the name of the file and a path within that file.
+            User-defined links allow users to supply callback functions
+            for link traversals, allowing links to exhibit essentially
+            any behavior.
+            External links are a kind of user-defined link, so their default
+            behavior can be overridden by the user.
+            -JML 2006/8/23
+       - Added H5Oopen and H5Oclose for opening objects of unknown type
+            (as link callback functions do).
+            -JML 2006/8/23
+       - Added H5Oopen_by_addr, H5Oincr_refcount, and H5Odecr_refcount for
+            opening objects by address.  Be very careful with these!
+            -JML 2006/8/23
+       - Added H5Fget_intent to get the "intent" of a file (whether it
+            was opened with read-write access or read-only.
+            -JML 2006/8/23
+       - Added Link Access Property Lists. They currently contain two
+            properties, nlinks (H5Pget/set_nlinks) and elink_prefix
+            (H5Pget/set_elink_prefix). nlinks controls how many soft and
+            user-defined traversals are allowed before HDF5 assumes it has
+            found a cycle (previously this defaulted to 16).
+            The elink_prefix is a filesystem path that is prefixed to the
+            names of any external link files opened using this LAPL.
+            -JML 2006/8/23
+       - Add H5L link APIs.  Old APIs (H5Glink, H5Gmove, etc.) are still
+         supported but deprecated.
+         New APIs are:
+            H5Llink - create a link to an object given its ID
+            H5Lmove - just like H5Gmove2
+            H5Lcopy - copy a link without copying the underlying object
+            H5Lcreate_hard - like H5Glink2 for hard links
+            H5Lcreate_soft - like H5Glink2 for soft links
+            H5Ldelete - just like H5Gunlink
+            H5Lget_val - just like H5Gget_linkval
+            H5Lget_info - gets link-specific info (like H5Gget_objinfo)
+
+         In addition, H5Gcreate_anon, H5Tcommit_anon, and H5Dcreate_anon
+         no longer create links to objects; objects must be manually linked
+         using H5Llink or they will be deleted when the ID is closed.
+
+         Link Creation Property Lists can be used to pass character
+         encoding (ASCII or UTF-8) for link names and to set the Intermediate
+         Group Creation Flag:
+            H5Pset_char_encoding, H5Pget_char_encoding
+            H5Pset_copy_object, H5Pget_copy_object
+         -JML 2006/7/5
+       - Added managements of collective IO supports for chunking storage
+         inside parallel HDF5
+         1) Implemented One IO with collective mode for all chunks in the
+            application by building one MPI derived datatype accross all
+            chunks.
+         2) Implemented the decision-making support to do collective IO inside
+            MPI-IO per chunk. 
+         3) Added the decision-making support to do one IO accross all chunks
+            or to do multiple IOs with each IO per chunk.
+         4) Added the support to handle the case some processes won't do any IOs in 
+            collectively.
+         5) Some MPI-IO package(mpich 1.2.6 or lower, e.g.) cannot handle
+            collective IO correctly for the case when some processes have no
+            contributions to IOs, a special macro is added to change
+            collective IO mode to independent IO mode inside HDF5 library.
+
+            Currently we find that MPICH at Linux and vender MPI-IO package at NCSA
+            Altix cannot handle this case. 
+            
+             "hdf5_mpi_special_collective_io_works=${hdf5_mpi_special_collective_io_works='no'}"
+              has been added at the end of file <ia64-linux-gnui> and
+                                                 <linux-gnulibc1>.
+
+             If MPI-IO packages at your Linux and Altix support this case,
+             please comment out the last line and report to us at
+             help@hdfgroup.org. We can tune in our configuration to
+             support this.                                                     
+ 
+             KY - 2006/02/16
+       - Added character encoding to attribute creation property lists.
+            JML - 2006/01/02
+       - Added H5Gcopy() routine to copy objects between while keeping
+         data in compressed form.  QAK - 2005/11/06
+       - Added H5Sextent_equal() routine.  QAK - 2005/11/06
+       - Added HSYS_ERROR which retrieves the system error message and pushes
+         it to the error stack.  This gives more information of the failed
+	 system call. AKC - 2005/08/04
+       - Added H5F_OBJ_LOCAL flag to H5Fget_obj_count() & H5Fget_obj_ids(), to
+         allow querying for objects in file that were opened with a particular
+         file ID, instead of all objects opened in file with any file ID.
+         QAK - 2005/06/01
+       - Added H5T_CSET_UTF8 character set to mark datatypes that use the
+         UTF-8 Unicode character encoding.  Added tests to ensure that
+         library handles UTF-8 object names, attributes, etc. -JL 2005/05/13
+       - HDF5 supports collective MPI-IO for irregular selection with HDF5
+         dataset. Irregular selection is when users use H5Sselect_hyperslab
+         more than once for the same dataset.
+         Currently, not all MPI-IO packages support complicated MPI derived
+                     datatype used in the implementation of irregular
+                     selection INSIDE HDF5. 
+                     1) DEC 5.x is not supporting complicated derived datatype.
+                     2) For AIX 5.1,
+                     if your poe version number is 3.2.0.19 or lower,
+                     please edit powerpc-ibm-aix5.x under hdf5/config,
+                     Find the line with
+                            << hdf5_mpi_complex_derived_datatype_works>>
+                     and UNCOMMENT this line before the configure.
+                     check poe version with the following command:
+                     lpp -l all | grep ppe.poe
+                     3) For Linux cluster, 
+                        if mpich version is 1.2.5 or lower, collective irregular selection
+                        IO is not supported, internally independent IO is used.
+                     4) For IRIX 6.5,
+                        if C compiler version is 7.3 or lower, collective irregular selection
+                        IO is not supported, internally independent IO is used.
+                     5) For platforms which internally used mpich, if the
+                        mpich version is 1.2.5 or lower, please find the 
+                        corresponding config file and add
+                        hdf5_mpi_complex_derived_datatype_works='no' at the
+                        end of the configuration file. For example, at NCSA
+                        SGI Altix, the internal mpich library is 1.2.5. So 
+                        hdf5_mpi_complex_derived_datatype_works='no' should be
+                        added at the end of the config file ia64-linux-gnu.
+                     KY - 2005/09/12
+        We also found not all MPI-IO packages support collective IO with one
+                    or more processes to have no contributions to IO.
+                     For mpich version 1.2.6 or lower and all IRIX machine, 
+                     if the library  checks that there are no IO contributions for some
+                     processes, collective IO request is replaced with
+                     independent inside HDF5.
+                     KY - 2006/05/04
+                    
+        - HDF5 N-bit filter 
+          HDF5 support N-bit filter from this version,  
+          The N-Bit filter is used effectively for compressing data of N-Bit
+          datatype as well as compound and array datatype with N-Bit fields. 
+          KY - 2005/04/15
+        - HDF5 scaleoffset filter
+          HDF5 supports scaleoffset filter for users to do data
+          compression through HDF5 library. 
+          Scale-Offset compression performs a scale and/or offset operation
+          on each data value and truncates the resulting value to a minimum 
+          number of bits and then stores the data.
+          Scaleoffset filter supports floating-point and integer datatype.
+          Please check the HDF5 reference manual for this.
+          KY - 2005/06/06
+        - Retired SRB vfd (--with-srb). Functions H5Pset_fapl_srb and
+          H5Pget_fapl_srb were removed.  EIP - 2005/04/07
+	- Retired GASS vfd (--with-gass).  Functions H5Pset_fapl_gass and
+	  H5Pget_fapl_gass are removed too.  AKC - 2005/3/3
+        - Pablo was removed from the source code EIP - 2005/01/21
+        - Modified registration of SZIP to dynamically detect the presence
+            or absence of the encoder.  Changed configure and Makefiles,
+            and tests to dynamically detect encoder. BEM - 2004/11/02
+	- Added function H5Pget_data_transform, together with the previously
+	    added H5Pset_data_transform, to support the data transform
+	    feature. AKC - 2004/10/26
+        - Compound datatype has been enhanced with a new feature of size 
+            adjustment.  The size can be increased and decreased(without
+            cutting the last member) as long as it doesn't go down to zero.  
+            No API change is involved.  SLU - 2004/10/1
+        - Put back 6 old error API functions to be backward compatible with
+            version 1.6.  They are H5Epush, H5Eprint, H5Ewalk, H5Eclear,
+            H5Eset_auto, H5Eget_auto.  Their new equivalent functions are
+            called H5Epush_stack, H5Eprint_stack, H5Ewalk_stack,
+            H5Eclear_stack, H5Eset_auto_stack, H5Eget_auto_stack.  SLU -
+            2004/9/2
+        - 4 new API functions, H5Tencode, H5Tdecode, H5Sencode, H5Sdecode were
+            added to the library.  Given object ID, these functions encode and 
+            decode HDF5 objects(data type and space) information into and from 
+            binary buffer.        SLU - 2004/07/21
+        - Modified the way how HDF5 calculates 'pixels_per_scanline' parameter for 
+            SZIP compression. Now there is no restriction on the size and shape of the
+            chunk except that the total number of elements in the chunk cannot be 
+            bigger than 'pixels_per_block' parameter provided by the user.  
+                                                                     EIP - 2004/07/21  
+        - Added support for SZIP without encoder.  Added H5Zget_filter_info
+            and changed H5Pget_filter and H5Pget_filter_by_id to support this
+            change.  JL/NF - 2004/06/30
+        - SZIP always uses K13 compression.  This flag no longer needs to
+            be set when calling H5Pset_szip.  If the flag for CHIP
+            compression is set, it will be ignored (since the two are mutually
+            exclusive).  JL/NF - 2004/6/30
+        - A new API function H5Fget_name was added.  It returns the name
+            of the file by object(file, group, data set, named data type,
+            attribute) ID.  SLU - 2004/06/29
+        - Added support for user defined identifier types.  NF/JL - 2004/06/29
+        - A new API function H5Fget_filesize was added.  It returns the
+            actual file size of the opened file.  SLU - 2004/06/24
+	- New Feature of Data transformation is added.  AKC - 2004/05/03.
+        - New exception handler for datatype conversion is put in to 
+            replace the old overflow callback function.  This exception
+            handler is set through H5Pset_type_conv_cb function.
+            SLU - 2004/4/27
+        - Added option that if $HDF5_DISABLE_VERSION_CHECK is set to 2,
+	    will suppress all library version mismatch warning messages.
+	    AKC - 2004/4/14
+	- A new type of dataspace, null dataspace(dataspace without any 
+            element) was added.  SLU - 2004/3/24
+        - Data type conversion(software) from integer to float was added.
+            SLU - 2004/3/13 
+        - Data type conversion(software) from float to integer was added.
+            Conversion from integer to float will be added later.  
+            SLU -2004/2/4
+        - Added new H5Premove_filter routine to remove I/O pipeline filters
+            from dataset creation property lists.  PVN - 2004/01/26
+        - Added new 'compare' callback parameter to H5Pregister & H5Pinsert
+            routines.  QAK - 2004/01/07
+        - Data type conversion(hardware) between integers and floats was added.
+            SLU 2003/11/21
+        - New function H5Iget_file_id() was added.  It returns file ID given
+            an object(dataset, group, or attribute) ID.  SLU 2003/10/29
+        - Added new fields to the H5G_stat_t for more information about an
+            object's object header.  QAK 2003/10/06
+        - Added new H5Fget_freespace() routine to query the free space in a
+            given file.  QAK 2003/10/06
+        - Added backward compatability with v1.6 for new Error API. SLU - 
+            2003/09/24
+        - Changed 'objno' field in H5G_stat_t structure from 'unsigned long[2]'
+            to 'haddr_t'.  QAK - 2003/08/08
+        - Changed 'fileno' field in H5G_stat_t structure from 'unsigned long[2]'
+            to 'unsigned long'.  QAK - 2003/08/08
+        - Changed 'hobj_ref_t' type from structure with array field to 'haddr_t'.
+            QAK - 2003/08/08
+        - Object references (hobj_ref_t) can now be compared with the 'objno'
+            field in the H5G_stat_t struct for testing if two objects are the
+            same within a file.  QAK - 2003/08/08
+        - Switched over to new error API. SLU - 2003/07/25
+
+    Parallel Library:
+    -----------------
+	- Added mpich2 as a testing "platform" informally. AKC - 2005/9/28.
+	- A dataset created in serial mode with H5D_ALLOC_TIME_INCR allocation
+	  setting was not extendible, either explicitly by H5Dextend or
+	  implicitly by writing to unallocated chunks.	Library now allocates
+	  more space when needed or directed if the file is opened by parallel
+	  mode, independent of what the dataset allocation mode is.
+	  CC/AKC - 2005/08/29.
+        - Allow compressed, chunked datasets to be read in parallel.
+            QAK - 2004/10/04
+        - Add options of using atomicity and file-sync to test_mpio_1wMr.
+            AKC - 2003/11/13
+        - Added parallel test, test_mpio_1wMr, which tests if the
+            underlaying parallel I/O system is conforming to the POSIX
+            write/read requirement.  AKC - 2003/11/12
+
+    Fortran Library:
+    ----------------
+         - added support for shared Fortran libraries.  -JML 2005/09/20
+         - added missing h5tget_member_class_f function
+                                                 EIP 2005/04/06         
+         - added new functions h5fget_name_f and h5fget_filesize_f 
+                                                 EIP 2004/07/08
+         - h5dwrite/read_f and h5awrite/read_f functions only accept dims parameter
+            of the type INTEGER(HSIZE_T).
+         - added support for native integers of 8 bytes (i.e. when special
+           compiler flag is specified to set native fortran integers to 8 bytes,
+           for example, -i8 flag for PGI and Absoft Fortran compilers, 
+           -qintsize=8 flag for IBM xlf compiler).
+                                                 EIP 2005/06/20
+         - added support for "big" REAL and DOUBLE PRECISION types
+           (usually the size is specified by compilers flags like 
+            -r8, -r16, etc.)
+           Known problem: multi file test fails when REAL is 16 bytes.
+                                                EIP 2005/09/8
+
+    C++ Library:
+    ----------------
+        - added support for shared C++ libraries.  -JML 2005/09/20
+        - Added missing member functions
+                H5::CompType::getMemberArrayType
+                H5::CompType::getMemberVarLenType
+                H5::AbstractDs::getArrayType
+                H5::AbstractDs::getVarLenType
+                H5::CommonFG::openArrayType
+                H5::CommonFG::openVarLenType
+                H5::PropList::copyProp -- this will replace the current
+                        H5::PropList::copyProp in later releases due
+                        to incorrect prototype.
+                H5::IdComponent::getHDFObjType
+                BMR - 2005/08/08
+
+
+    Tools:
+    ------
+        - h5repack and h5diff changed command line parameter syntax to be
+           similar to h5dump, adding also long switch names. PVN - 2008/1/16
+        - h5repack now supports adding multiple filters to all objects. 
+	     PVN - 2008/1/16
+        - h5dump lists groups and attributes in requested orders (by name and 
+           creation order, both ascending and descending). PVN - 2007/10/5
+        - h5import imports string (text) data. PVN - 2007/10/5
+        - h52gif and gif2h5: Both these tools were revised to include the High
+          Level Image API support, and tests were added to /hl/tools/gif2h5.
+           PVN - 2007/04/13
+        - h5dump: added support for double long type H5T_NATIVE_LDOUBLE. PVN
+           2007/03/13
+        - h5dump: added support for binary output, see usage. PVN 2007/03/13
+        - h5repack: added support for the new nbit and scaleoffset filters.
+           PVN - 2007/05/07
+        - h5repack: now uses the API function H5Ocopy (of the tool h5copy) to
+           recreate objects if there is not a user input for changes. PVN -
+           2007/05/07
+        - h5repack: added support for reading and repacking  by hyperslabs for
+           large files. PVN - 2007/03/01
+        - h5repack: a new option allows the copy using the file type (default)
+           instead of the previous conversion to native type. PVN - 2007/03/01
+        - h5repack: output the percentage of compression used. PVN - 2007/03/01
+        - h5diff: added support for -p option for unsigned long_long data. PVN
+          - 2007/02/26
+        - h5diff: added support for comparing dataset regions. PVN - 2007/02/20
+        - h5diff: added support for reading and comparing by hyperslabs for large files.
+           PVN - 2007/02/20
+        - h5diff: printing of dataset dimensions along with dataset name. PVN -2007/02/19
+        - h5dump now uses the new API function H5Rget_name to display the name
+          of the dataset referenced instead of its ID. PVN - 2007/02/19
+        - Added new tool, h5mkgrp. QAK - 2007/02/14
+        - Added new tool, h5copy. PVN - 2006/7/15
+	- Removed obsolete pdb2hdf5 tool from tools/misc  -JML 2005/10/24
+	- Added build_h5perf_alone.sh that builds h5perf by standalone mode.
+	  AKC - 2005/09/18.
+        - Sped up h5dump on files with large numbers of objects.
+            QAK - 2005/08/25
+        - Added a standalone mode for building h5perf.  AKC - 2005/08/12
+        - new tool, h5jam. See reference manual.  2004/10/08
+        - h5repack.sh did not report errors encountered during tests.  It does
+            now.  AKC - 2004/04/02
+        - Added the MPI-I/O and MPI-POSIX drivers to the list of VFL drivers
+            available for h5dump and h5ls.  RPM & QAK - 2004/02/01
+        - Added option --vfd= to h5ls to allow a VFL driver to be selected
+            by a user.  RPM & QAK - 2004/02/01
+	- Added option -showconfig to compiler tools (h5cc,h5fc,h5c++).
+	    AKC - 2004/01/08
+        - Install the "h5cc" and "h5fc" tools as "h5pcc" and "h5pfc"
+            respectively if library is built in parallel mode.
+            WCW - 2003/11/04
+        - Added metadata benchmark (perform/perf_meta).  SLU - 2003/10/03
+        - Changed output of "OID"s from h5dump from "<number>-<number>" to
+            "<number".  This affects both the "regular" and XML output.
+            QAK - 2003/08/08
+        - Changed output of file IDs and "OID"s from h5ls from
+            "<number>:<number>:<number>:<number>" to "<number>:<number>"
+            QAK - 2003/08/08
+
+    High-Level APIs:
+    ------
+        - Fortran interfaces for the Image, Table and Lite APIs. PVN - 2007/5/1
+        - New HDF5 Dimension Scale API (H5DS) allows dimension scales to be
+          created in an HDF5 file and associated with specific datasets. PVN - 2007/5/1
+        - There are two new functions in the Lite library, H5LTtext_to_dtype
+            and H5LTdtype_to_text.  H5LTtext_to_dtype creates a HDF5 data type
+            given a text description; H5LTdtype_to_text converts a data type
+            to text description.  Only DDL definition is supported as text 
+            desciption now. SLU - 2006/05/17
+        - Added Packet Table API for creating tables with less overhead than
+            H5TB API.  Added C++ wrapper for Packet Tables.  See documentation.
+            JML - 2004/03/28
+    
+    Documentation 
+    ------------- 
+        - The documentation for this release is largely complete, but 
+            trails the source code.  A few of the newer functions are 
+            not yet documented.                       FMB - 2007/04/18
+        - The user documents for this release can be accessed directly at
+            this location:
+               http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_1.8pre/doc/
+            The most recent document versions (updated daily) in the 
+            1.8 development branch can be accessed at this location:
+               http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_dev_snapshot/H5_dev/
+                                                      FMB - 2007/04/18
+
+
+Support for new platforms, languages and compilers.
+=======================================
+        - Added support for Free-BSD on amd64 with GNU C and Fortran compilers
+          4.2.1
+                                                     EIP - 2007/06/25
+        - Added support for sequential and parallel libraries for Intel 64 Linux
+          cluster (abe.ncsa.uiuc.edu).  Among three MPICH packages available on
+          this machine, only Open MPI works.  The VMI has seg fault in hyperslab.c
+          and bittests.c tests.  The MVAPICH2 complained about mpd not running 
+          the parallel test.  (see Known Problems section for more info)
+                                                     EIP - 2007/06/25
+        - Added support for HPUX11.23 for both 32 and 64-bit; HDF5 C++
+        - Added support for 64-bit Windows with Visual Studio .NET and 2005.
+            SJW - 2007/06/25
+        - Added suport for HPUX11.23 for both 32 and 64-bit; HDF5 C++
+          shared library is not supported with +DD64 flag.
+                                                     EIP - 2006/06/22
+        - Added support for VAX floating numbers for Alpha Open VMS 7.3.2
+                                                     EIP - 2006/05/05
+        - Fixed broken make.com files in tools directories
+                                                     EIP - 2006/05/05
+        - Added support for Alpha Open VMS 7.3.2 EIP - 2006/04/15
+        - Added support for Cray X1.  JML - 2005/10/03
+        - PGI Fortran compiler is supported on Linux64 systems (x86_64)
+                            EIP - 2004/08/19
+        - Absoft compiler f95 v9.0 supported on Linux 2.4
+                            EIP - 2004/07/29
+        - HDF5 Fortran APIs are supported on Mac OSX with IBM XL Fortran
+            compiler version 8.1. This is a default compiler.
+        - HDF5 Fortran APIs are supported on MAC OSX with Absoft F95 compiler
+            version 8.2; set F9X environment varibale to f95, for example
+            setenv F9X f95
+            Use --disable-shared --enable-static configure flags when Absoft
+            compiler is used.
+                             EIP - 2004/07/27
+        - HDF5 Fortran APIs are supported on MAC OSX with IBM XL Fortran
+            Compiler version 8.1 Use "--disable-shared --enable-static"
+            configure flags along with the "--enable-fortran" flag to build
+            Fortran library.  EIP - 2004/01/07
+
+Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.6.0 release
+==================================
+
+    Library
+    -------
+        - Changed library's behavior for reading files that might have
+            corrupted object header information from a previous (buggy)
+            version of the library.  By default, the library now rebuilds the
+            correct object header information instead of issuing an error.
+            Previous "strict" file format interpretation can be enabled with
+            the "--enable-strict-format-checks" configure option.
+            QAK - 2008/01/13
+        - Fixed several bugs with writing fill values for datasets that have
+            a variable-length datatype or component datatype.  QAK - 2007/06/19
+        - STDIO driver didn't support files bigger than 2GB because the OFFSET
+            parameter of fseek is of type LONG INT, not big enough for big files.
+            Use fseeko instead for big files if it's available on the system.
+            SLU - 2007/4/5
+        - Fixed a bug in H5Sselect_valid() that caused an incorrect value to
+            be returned (0) instead of FAIL on error conditions such as the
+            selection or extent not being defined. CMC - 2007/01/17
+        - Fixed the MULTI driver problem (Bug #731) that corruptted the data.
+            SLU - 2007/1/12
+        - Fixed file corruption bug which could write an incorrect number of
+            messages to an object's header under certain circumstances.
+            Generally, the sequence of actions to generate this bug looks
+            like this:
+                - Create an object
+                - Close the file
+                - Re-open the file
+                - Add 2 (or more) attributes to the object
+                - Close the file
+                - Re-open the file
+                - Delete one of the attributes on the object
+                - Add a smaller attribute to the object
+                - Delete the smaller atttribute on the object
+                - Add a larger attribute on the object
+
+            After this, the number of header messages stored for the object
+            will be off by one.  Other sequences of modifying attributes on an
+            object could also trigger this bug.  If you are opening an
+            object and the bottom few messages of the HDF5 error stack
+            resembles this, the object has been affected by this bug:
+
+              #007: ../../hdf5_v1.6/src/H5C.c line 3887 in H5C_load_entry(): unable to load entry
+                major(08): Meta data cache layer
+                minor(40): Unable to load metadata into cache
+              #008: ../../hdf5_v1.6/src/H5Ocache.c line 332 in H5O_load(): corrupt object header - too few messages
+                major(12): Object header layer
+                minor(40): Unable to load metadata into cache
+
+            Specifically, "corrupt object header" is the best string to search
+            for in the HDF5 error stack output.
+
+            If your files have been affected by this bug, or you are concerned
+            that your files might have been, please contact the HDF Helpdesk
+            at help@hdfgroup.org for a tool to detect and repair files
+            affected by this problem.  QAK - 2006/6/16
+        - Fixed various problems with retrieving names of objects, especially
+            with mounted files.  QAK - 2005/12/25
+        - Fixed core dump when closing root groups opened through two different
+            file handles that operate on the same actual file.  QAK - 2005/10/02
+        - Corrected errors when performing various operations on a group opened
+            by dereferencing an object reference.  QAK - 2005/07/30
+        - Fixed a bug with named datatypes where a copy of a named datatype
+            used to create a dataset would accidentally use the original
+            named datatype for the dataset's datatype.  QAK - 2005/07/23
+        - Made H5Fget_name() be consistent and always return name of actual
+            file the ID is in.  (Instead of the name of the top file in a
+            file mounting hierarchy).  QAK - 2005/07/19
+        - Reworked internal file mounting semantics to hopefully eliminate
+            mounting problems.  We now require that files that are mounting
+            together all have the same "file close degree".  QAK - 2005/07/19
+        - More bug fixes on holding open files that are mounted and have
+            IDs open.  QAK - 2005/07/14
+        - Don't unmount child files until the parent file actually closes.
+            (Previously, if an object is holding open a file, the child files
+            would get unmounted too early).  QAK - 2005/07/05
+        - Fixed bug where unmounted files could cause the library to go into
+            an infinite loop when shutting down.  QAK - 2005/06/30
+        - The library didn't save the information of family driver in file.
+          The original file member size was lost after file was closed (see
+          bug #213).  This has been fixed by saving driver name and member
+          file size in the superblock.  SLU - 2005/6/24
+        - Fixed bug with hyperslab selections that use selection offsets and
+            operate on chunked datasets going into infinite loop or dumping
+            core.  QAK - 2005/06/17
+        - Corrected memory leak and possible corruption when opening a group.
+            QAK - 2005/06/17
+        - Added check for opaque datatype tags being too long (check against
+            H5T_OPAQUE_TAG_MAX, currently set to 256).  QAK - 2005/06/14
+        - Fixed various errors in maintaining names for open objects in the
+            face of unusual mount & unmount operations.  QAK - 2005/06/08
+        - "SEMI" and "STRONG" file close degree settings now apply only to the
+            particular file ID being closed, instead of operating on all open
+            file IDs for a given file.  QAK - 2005/06/01
+        - For family driver, the library didn't save member size in file.
+          When file is reopened, the size of 1st member file determine the 
+          member size.  Now member size is saved in file and is used to 
+          define member file size.  Wrong file access property of member size
+          will result in a failure.  Using any other driver except family 
+          will cause library to return error.  So is multi driver. SLU - 
+          2005/05/24  
+        - Fixed error in opening object in group that was opened in mounted
+          file which has been unmounted.  QAK - 2005/03/17
+        - Fixed a racing condition in MPIPOSIX virtual file drive close
+	  function.  Now all processes must completed the close before any
+	  of them is returned.  This prevents some "faster" processes start
+	  accessing the file for another purpose (e.g., open with truncate)
+	  while other "slower" processes have not closed the same file with
+	  the previous purpose.  AKC - 2005/03/01
+        - H5Tget_member_value calls for enum datatype didn't return correct 
+            value if H5Tenum_valueof was called first.  It's fixed.  SLU - 
+            2005/02/08
+        - For variable-length string, H5Tget_class returned H5T_STRING as its
+            class.  But H5Tdetect_class and H5Tget_member_class considered it
+            as H5T_VLEN.  This is fixed to let all these 3 functions treat it
+            as H5T_STRING.  SLU - 2005/02/08
+        - The byte order of 1-byte integer types was fixed as little endian
+            even on a big-endian machine.  This has been corrected.  SLU -
+            2005/02/07 
+        - Fix segmentation fault when calling H5Fflush with an attribute that
+            hasn't had a value written to it open.  QAK - 2004/10/18
+        - Back up supporting bitfield and time types in H5Tget_native_type.  
+            Leave it to future support.  The function simply returns error 
+            message of "not support" for bitfield and time types.  
+            SLU - 2004/10/5
+        - Fixed address check in Core VFL driver to avoid spurious address/size
+            overflows for odd valued addresses and/or sizes.  QAK - 2004/09/27
+	- Fixed parallel bug in which some processes attempted collective
+	    I/O while others did independent I/O.  Bug appeared when some
+	    processes used point selections, and others didn't.  JRM - 2004/9/15
+        - Corrected error where dataset region references were written in an
+            incorrect way on Cray machines.  PVN & QAK - 2004/09/13
+        - The H5Tget_native_type now determines the native type for integers 
+	    based on the precision. This is to avoid cases of wrongly converting 
+            an int to a short in machines that have a short of 8 bytes but with 
+	    32bit precision (e.g Cray SV1). PVN - 2004/09/07  
+        - Changed H5Dread() to not overwrite data in an application's buffer
+            with garbage when accessing a chunked dataset with an undefined
+            fill value and an unwritten chunk is uncountered.  QAK - 2004/08/25
+        - Fixed error which could cause a core dump when a type conversion
+            routine was registered after a compound datatype had been
+            converted and then an equivalment compound datatype was converted
+            again.  QAK - 2004/08/07
+        - Fixed memory overwrite when encoding "multi" file driver information
+            for file's superblock.  QAK - 2004/08/05
+        - Fixed obscure bug where a filter which failed during chunk allocation
+            could allow library to write uncompressed data to disk but think
+            the data was compressed.  QAK - 2004/07/29
+        - Fixed bug where I/O to an extendible chunked dataset with zero-sized
+            dimensions would cause library to fail an assertion.
+            QAK - 2004/07/27
+        - Fixed bug where chunked datasets which have filters defined,
+            allocation time set to "late" and whose chunks don't align with
+            the dataspace bounds could have incorrect data stored when
+            overwriting the entire dataset on the first write.  QAK - 2004/07/27
+        - Added check to ensure that dataspaces have extents set. JML-2004/07/26
+        - Fixed bug on some Solaris systems where HDF5 would try to use
+            gettimeofday() when that function didn't work properly.
+            JML - 2004/07/23
+        - Fixed bug in H5Sset_extent_simple where setting maximum size to
+            non-zero, then to zero would cause an error.  JML - 2004/07/20
+        - Allow NULL pointer for buffer parameter to H5Dread & H5Dwrite
+            when not writing data ("none" selection or hyperslab or point
+            selection with no elements defined).  QAK - 2004/07/20
+        - Calling H5Gcreate() on "/" or "." throws an error instead of
+            failing quietly. JML - 2004/07/19
+        - Fixed bug where setting file address size to be very small could
+            trigger an assert if the file grew to more than 64 KB.  Now throws
+            an error and data can be recovered. JL/NF - 2004/07/14
+        - Fixed bug where "resurrecting" a dataset was failing.
+            QAK - 2004/07/14
+        - Fixed bug where incorrect data could be read from a chunked dataset
+            after it was extended.  QAK - 2004/07/12
+        - Fixed failure to read data back from file of compound type with
+            variable-length string as field.  SLU - 2004/06/10
+        - Fixed potential file corruption bug when a block of metadata could
+            overlap the end of the internal metadata accumulator buffer and
+            the buffer would be extended correctly, but would incorrectly 
+            change it's starting address.  QAK - 2004/06/09
+        - Opaque datatype with no tag failed for some operations.  Fixed.
+            SLU - 2004/6/3 
+        - Fixed potential file corruption bug where dimensions that were
+            too large (a value greater than could be represented in 32-bits)
+            could cause the incorrect amount of space to be allocated in a
+            file for the raw data for the dataset.  QAK - 2004/06/01
+	- Fixed dtypes "sw long double -> double" failure in QSC class
+            machines.  AKC - 2004/4/16
+        - Fixed problem with fletcher32 filter when converting data of different
+	    endianess. PVN - 2004/03/10
+        - Fixed problem with H5Tget_native_type() not handling opaque fields
+            correctly.  QAK - 2004/01/31
+        - Fixed several errors in B-tree deletion code which could cause a
+            B-tree (used with groups and chunked datasets) to become corrupt
+            with the right sequence of deleted objects.  QAK - 2004/01/19
+        - Fixed small internal memory leaks of fill-value information.
+            QAK - 2004/01/13
+        - Fixed bug that caused variable-length datatypes (strings or sequences)
+            used for datasets in files with objects that were unlinked to
+            fail to be read/written to a file.  QAK - 2004/01/13
+        - Detect situation where szip 'pixels per block' is larger than the
+            fastest changing dimension of a dataset's chunk size and disallow
+            this (due to limits in szip library).  QAK - 2003/12/31
+        - Fixed bug with flattened hyperslab selections that would generate
+            incorrect hyperslab information with certain high-dimensionality
+            combinations of start/stride/count/block information.
+            QAK - 2003/12/31
+        - Fixed bug with variable-length datatypes used in compound datatypes.
+            SLU - 2003/12/29
+        - Fixed bug in parallel I/O routines that would cause reads from
+            "short datasets" (datasets which were only partially written out)
+            to return invalid data.  QAK & AKC - 2003/12/19
+        - Fixed bug where scalar dataspaces for attributes were reporting as
+            simple dataspaces.  QAK - 2003/12/13
+        - Fixed problem with selection offsets of hyperslab selections in
+            chunked datasets causing the library to go into an infinite loop.
+            QAK - 2003/12/13
+        - Fixed H5Giterate to avoid re-using index parameter after iteration
+            callback has been called (allows iteration callback to modify the
+            index parameter itself).  QAK - 2003/12/06
+        - Fixed various floating-point conversion problems, including a
+            change which could corrupt data when converting from double->float.
+            QAK - 2003/11/24
+        - Changed "single process" metadata writing in library to collective
+            I/O by all processes, in order to guarantee correct data being
+            written with MPI-I/O.  QAK - 2003/11/20
+        - Fixed problems with fill values and variable-length types and also
+            I/O on VL values that were set to NULL.  QAK - 2003/11/08
+        - Fixed problems with MPI datatypes that caused ASCI Q machine to
+            hang.  QAK - 2003/10/28
+        - Removed HDF5_MPI_PREFER_DERIVED_TYPES environment variable support,
+            since it had no benefit.  QAK - 2003/10/28
+        - Single hyperslab selections (which were set with only one call to
+            H5Sselect_hyperslab) that had dimensions that could be "flattened"
+            but were interspersed with dimensions that could not be flattened
+            were not correctly handled, causing core dumps.  QAK - 2003/10/25
+        - Fixed incorrect datatype of the third parameter to the Fortran90
+            h5pset(get)_cache_f subroutine (INTEGER to INTEGER(SIZE_T)) 
+            EIP - 2003/10/13
+        - Fixed problems with accessing variable-length data datatypes on
+            Crays.  QAK - 2003/10/10
+        - Fixed potential file corruption bug when too many object header
+            messages (probably attributes, from a user perspective) were
+            inserted into an object header and certain other conditions were
+            met.  QAK - 2003/10/08
+        - Changed implementation of internal ID searching algorithm to avoid
+            O(n) behavior for many common cases.  QAK - 2003/10/06
+        - Allow partial parallel writing to compact datasets.  QAK - 2003/10/06
+        - Correctly create reference to shared datatype in attribute, instead
+            of making a copy of the shared datatype in the attribute.
+            QAK - 2003/10/01
+        - Revert changes which caused files >2GB to fail when created with
+            MPI-I/O file driver on certain platforms.  QAK - 2003/09/16
+        - Allow compound datatypes to grow in size.  SLU - 2003/09/10
+        - Detect if a type is already packed before attempting to pack it
+            again or check if it is locked.  SLU - 2003/09/10
+        - Corrected bug when opening a file twice with read-only permission
+            for one open and then closing the read-only access file ID would
+            generate an error.  QAK - 2003/09/10
+        - Corrected bug in repeated calls to H5Pget_access_plist() which would
+            incorrectly manage reference counts of internal information and
+            eventually blow up.  QAK - 2003/09/02
+        - Return rank of the array datatype on successful call to
+            H5Tget_array_dims().  QAK - 2003/08/30
+        - Corrected bug in H5Tdetect_class which was not correctly detecting
+            datatype classes of fields in nested compound datatypes in some
+            circumstances.  QAK - 2003/08/30
+        - Corrected bug in sieve buffer code which could cause loss of data
+            when a small dataset was created and deleted in quick succession.
+            QAK - 2003/08/27
+        - Corrected bug in H5Gget_objname_by_idx which was not allowing NULL
+            for the name when just querying for the object name's length.
+            QAK - 2003/08/25
+        - Corrected bug in variable-length string handling which could
+            generate a core dump on writing variable-length strings as part
+            of a compound datatype on certain architectures.  QAK - 2003/08/25
+        - Corrected bug in H5Tget_native_type which would incorrectly compute
+            the size of certain compound datatypes and also incorrectly
+            compute the offset of the last field for those compound datatypes.
+            QAK - 2003/08/25
+        - Corrected bug in H5Tget_native_type which would drop string datatype
+            metadata (padding, etc.)  QAK - 2003/08/25
+        - Corrected bugs in H5Gget_num_objs, H5Gget_objname_by_idx and
+            H5Gget_objtype_by_idx to allow them to accept location IDs, not just
+            group IDs.  QAK - 2003/08/21
+        - Corrected bug when using scalar dataspace for memory selection and
+            operating on chunked dataset.  QAK - 2003/08/18
+        - Corrected bugs with multiple '/' characters in names for H5Glink
+            and H5Gunlink.  QAK - 2003/08/16
+        - Corrected bug with user blocks that didn't allow a user block to
+            be inserted in front of a file after the file was created.
+            QAK - 2003/08/13
+        - Corrected errors with using point selections to access data in
+            chunked datasets.  QAK - 2003/07/23
+        - Corrected error with variable-length datatypes and chunked datasets
+            caused H5Dwrite to fail sometimes.  QAK - 2003/07/19
+        - Modified library and file format to support storing indexed storage
+            (chunked dataset) B-tree's with non-default internal 'K' values.
+            QAK - 2003/07/15
+        - Returned H5T_BKG_TEMP support to library after it was accidentally
+            removed.  QAK - 2003/07/14
+
+    Configuration
+    -------------
+	- Configure can now use any tr command.  No more need for
+	  defining variable TR nor is it supported. -AKC 2006/05/19
+        - Parallel I/O with the MPI-I/O driver will no longer work if the
+            filesystem is not POSIX compliant.  The "HDF5_MPI_1_METAWRITE"
+            environment variable has been removed.  QAK - 2004/01/30
+        - Fixed the error that cause "make install" to fail because of the
+            macro definition syntax of "prefix?=..."  AKC - 2003/07/22
+
+    Performance
+    -------------
+        - Optimized I/O for enumerated datatypes that are a superset of source
+            enumerated datatype.  QAK - 2005/03/19
+        - More optimizations to inner loops of datatype conversions for
+            integers and floats which give a 10-50% speedup.  QAK - 2003/11/07
+        - Hoisted invariant 'if/else's out of inner datatype conversion loop for
+            integer and floating-point values, giving about a 20% speedup.
+            QAK - 2003/10/20
+
+    Tools
+    -----
+        - Fixed h5dump regarding the display of blocks in hyperslab
+           selections. PVN 2008/01/16
+        - Fixed h5diff regarding the display of NaN (Not a Number)
+           values. PVN 2008/01/16
+	- Fixed h5dump regarding the parsing of binary output parameters. 
+           PVN 2008/01/16
+	- Fixed memory problems in h52gif and gif2h5. PVN 2008/01/16
+	- Fixed h5repack dealing with NULL references. PVN 2008/01/16 
+        - Fixed h5dump & h5ls to display attributes in "name" order, rather
+           than the order they are encountered in the object header.
+           QAK - 2007/10/04
+        - Fixed h5dump regarding the display of named datatypes
+           attributes. PVN 2007/03/13
+        - Fixed h5dump regarding the display of group comments. PVN
+           2007/03/13
+        - Fixed h5dump regarding the display of hardlinks pointing 
+           to the root group. PVN 2007/03/13
+        - Fixed h5diff percentage option -p. PVN 2007/03/05
+        - Fixed h5dump that caused array indices greater than 2 ^32-1
+           not to be printed correctly - PVN 2007/2/19
+        - Fixed h5dump to print attributes data in ASCII if -r option is used.
+	    AKC - 2004/11/18
+        - Fixed space utilization reported in h5ls to correct error in formula
+            used.  QAK - 2004/10/22
+        - Fixed h5redeploy which sometimes complain too many argument for the
+            test command. (The complain did not hinder the h5redploy to
+            proceed correctly.) AKC - 2003/11/03
+        - Fixed a segmentation fault of h5diff when percentage option is used.
+            AKC - 2003/08/27
+        - Switched away from tools using internal "fixtype" function(s) to use
+            H5Tget_native_type() internally.  QAK - 2003/08/25
+
+
+    Documentation 
+    ------------- 
+
+
+    F90 APIs
+    --------
+        - h5pget_driver_f was returning information that could not be
+          interpreted by fortran application program; fixed. EIP - 2005/04/10 
+
+
+Platforms Tested
+================
+Platforms marked with * were not tested for hdf5-1.8.0-rc* release
+(This information is somewhat out of date and may be inaccurate.  It will be
+    updated for a later release)
+
+*   AIX 5.2 (32/64 bit)           xlc 8.0.0.11
+                                  xlC 8.0
+                                  xlf 10.01.0000.0 
+                                  mpcc_r 6.0.0.8
+                                  mpxlf_r 8.1.1.7
+*    AIX 5.3 (32/64 bit)           xlc 7.0.0.8
+                                  xlC 7.0.0.8
+                                  xlf  09.01.0000.0007
+*   Cray X1 water 3.0.35          Cray Standard C Version 5.4.0.7.4
+                                  Cray Fortran 5.4.0.7.3
+                                  Cray C++ 5.4.0.7.4
+    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
+
+*   HP-UX B.11.23                 HP aC++/ANSI C B3910B A.06.00
+                                  HP F90 v2.9.2
+                                  HP aC++/ANSI C B3910B A.06.00
+    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 3.4.6 20060404
+    (kagiso)                      PGI 7.0-7 (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, g95 (GCC 4.0.3)
+    (smirom)                      PGI 6.2-5 (pgcc, pgf90, pgCC)
+                         	  Intel 9.1 (icc, iort, icpc)
+    Linux 2.6.5-7.252.1-rtgfx #1 
+          SMP ia64                Intel(R) C++ Version 9.0
+    (cobalt)                      Intel(R) Fortran Itanium(R) Version 9.0 
+                                  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 i86pc              Sun C 5.7
+                                  Sun Fortran 95 8.1
+                                  Sun C++ 5.7
+    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_292.til1 ia64
+    (NCSA tg-login)               gcc 3.2.2
+                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 8.1
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 8.1
+				  mpich-gm-1.2.5..10-intel-r2
+    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  10.4 (Intel)          gcc i686-apple-darwin8-gcc-4.0.1 (GCC) 4.0.1 
+                                  G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.91!) Nov 21 2006)
+*    Alpha Open VMS 7.3
+
+
+Supported Configuration Features Summary
+(This table was not modified for 1.8.0-rc* release; for information contact help@hdfgroup.org)
+========================================
+
+    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
+SunOS5.8 64-bit          n        y      n        y     y     y
+SunOS5.8 32-bit          n        y      n        y     y     y
+SunOS5.10 64-bit         y(1)     y      n        y     y     y
+SunOS5.10 32-bit         y(1)     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
+Cray XT3           (16)  n        n      n        n     n     n
+AIX-5.2 & 5.3 32-bit     y        y      y        y     y     y
+AIX-5.2 & 5.3 64-bit     y        y      y        y     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 10.4 PowerPC    n               n
+FreeBSD 4.11             n        n      n        y     y     y
+RedHat EL3  W       (3)  y(1a)    y(10)  y(1a)    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(1a)    y(11)  n        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
+Alpha OpenVMS 7.3.2      n        y      n        y     n     n
+
+
+
+Platform                 Shared  Shared    Shared    static-  Thread-  
+                         C libs  F90 libs  C++ libs  exec     safe     
+Solaris2.8 64-bit        y       y         y         x        y        
+Solaris2.8 32-bit        y       y         y         x        y        
+Solaris2.10 64-bit       y                           x        y        
+Solaris2.10 32-bit       y                           x        y        
+IRIX64_6.5 64-bit        y       y         n         y        y        
+IRIX64_6.5 32-bit        y       dna       y         y        y        
+HPUX11.00                y       n         y         x        n        
+HPUX11.23-32bit          y       n         n         y        n        
+HPUX11.23-64bit          y       dna       n         y        n        
+Cray XT3           (16)  n       n         n         n        n        
+AIX-5.2 & 5.3 32-bit     n       n         n         y        n        
+AIX-5.2 & 5.3 64-bit     n       n         n         y        n        
+Windows XP               y       y(15)     y         y        y        
+Windows XP x64           y       y(15)     y         y        y        
+Windows Vista            y       n         n         y        y        
+Mac OS X 10.3            y                           y        n        
+Mac OS X 10.4 PowerPC
+FreeBSD 4.11             y       n         y         y        y        
+RedHat EL3  W       (3)  y       y(10)     y         y        y        
+RedHat EL3  W Intel (3)  y       y         y         y        n        
+RedHat EL3  W PGI   (3)  y       y         y         y        n        
+SuSe x86_64 W GNU (3,12) y       y         y         y        y        
+SuSe x86_64 W Int (3,12) y       y         y         y(14)    n        
+SuSe x86_64 W PGI (3,12) y       y         y         y(14)    n        
+Linux 2.4 Xeon C 
+    Lustre Intel    (6)  y       y         y         y        n        
+Linux 2.4 SuSE 
+    ia64 C Intel    (7)  y       y         y         y        n        
+Linux 2.4 SGI Altix 
+    ia64 Intel           y                           y        n        
+Alpha OpenVMS 7.3.2      n       n         n         y        n        
+
+    Notes: (1)  Using mpich 1.2.6.
+           (1a) Using mpich2 1.0.6.
+           (2)  Using mpt and mpich 1.2.6.
+           (3)  Linux 2.6 with GNU, Intel, and PGI compilers, as indicated.  
+                  W or C indicates workstation or cluster, respectively.
+
+           (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
+==============
+* We discovered two problems when running collective IO parallel HDF5 tests 
+  with chunking storage on  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 wrong derived data type and corrupt data
+     may be generated.
+  This only happens when turning on collective IO with chunking storage 
+  with some complex selections. We haven't found these problems on other
+  MPI-IO compilers. If you encounter these problems, you may use Independent IO
+  instead.
+
+  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. Higher level of optimization 
+  causes failures in several HDF5 library tests. 
+* For HPUX 11.23 many tools tests failed for 64-bit version when linked to the
+  shared libraries (tested for 1.8.0-beta2)
+* For SNL, Red Storm: only paralle HDF5 is supported.  The serial tests pass
+  and the parallel tests also pass with lots of non-fatal error messages.
+* For LLNL, uP: both serial and parallel pass.  Zeus: serial passes but
+  parallel fails with a known proglem in MPI.  ubgl: serial passes but
+  parallel fails. 
+* on SUN 5.10 C++ test fails in the "Testing Shared Datatypes with Attributes" test 
+* 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, Scaleoffset filter isn't supported. The filter cannot be applied to
+  HDF5 data generated on VAX. Scaleoffset filter only supports IEEE standard
+  for floating-point data.
+* 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, we found that if more than two processes
+  contribute no IO and the application asks to do IO with collective, we found
+  that when using 4 processors, a simple collective write will be hung
+  sometimes. This can be verified with t_mpi test under testpar.
+* On IRIX6.5, when C compiler version >7.4, the complicate MPI derived data type
+  code will work. However, the user should be aware to enlarge MPI_TYPE_MAX environment 
+  variable to some certian value in order to use collective irregular selection code.
+  For example, the current parallel HDF5 test needs to enlarge MPI_TYPE_MAX to 
+  200,000 to make the test pass.
+* The dataset created or rewritten with the v1.6.3 library or after can't 
+  be read with the v1.6.2 library or before when Fletcher32 EDC(filter) is 
+  enabled.  There was a bug in the calculating code of the Fletcher32 
+  checksum in the library before v1.6.3.  The checksum value wasn't 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 is no 
+  longer the same as before on little-endian system.  The library release 
+  after 1.6.4 can still read the dataset created or rewritten with the library
+  of v1.6.2 or before.  SLU - 2005/6/30
+* For the version 6(6.02 and 6.04) of Portland Group compiler on AMD Opteron
+  processor, there's a bug in the compiler for optimization(-O2).  The library
+  failed in several tests but all related to 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".  HDF5 does not use sockets (except for stream-VFD).  This is
+  due to problems of the poe command trying to set up the debug socket.
+  Check if there are many old /tmp/s.pedb.* staying around.  These are
+  sockets used by the poe command and left behind due to failed commands.
+  Ask your system administrator to clean them out.  Lastly, request IBM
+  to provide a mean to run poe without the debug socket.
+
+* The C++ library's tests fails when compiling with PGI C++ compiler.  The
+  workaround until the problem is correctly handled is to use the 
+  flag "--instantiate=local" prior to the configure and build steps, as:
+        setenv CXX "pgCC --instantiate=local"  for pgCC 5.02 and higher
+
+
+* The stream-vfd test uses ip port 10007 for testing. If another
+  application is already using that port address, the test will hang
+  indefinitely and has to be terminated by the kill command. To try the
+  test again, change the port address in test/stream_test.c to one not
+  being used in the host.
+
+* 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 platform for the serial mode. The parallel mode works fine
+  with this option.
+  
+  It is suggested that you don't use this option on these platforms
+  during configuration.
+
+* With the gcc 2.95.2 compiler, HDF 5 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 Stream VFD was not tested yet under Windows. It is not supported
+  in the TFLOPS machine.
+
+
+* The ./dsets tests failed in 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.
+
+* Certain platforms give false negatives when testing h5ls:
+    - Cray J90 and Cray T90IEEE give errors during testing when displaying
+      some floating-point values. These are benign differences due to
+      the different precision in the values displayed and h5ls appears to
+      be dumping floating-point numbers correctly.
+
+* Before building HDF5 F90 Library from source on Crays 
+  replace H5Aff.f90, H5Dff.f90 and H5Pff.f90 files in the fortran/src
+  subdirectory in the top level directory with the Cray-specific files
+  from this site:
+       ftp://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/pub/outgoing/hdf5/hdf5-1.8.0-pre/PATCH/
+
+* 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 HDF5 fortran library,
+  compilation may fail for fortranlib_test.f90, fflush1.f90 and fflush2.f90
+  complaining about exit subroutine. Comment out the line 
+  IF (total_error .ne. 0) CALL exit (total_error)
+
+* On IA32 and IA64 systems, if you use a compiler other than GCC (such as
+  Intel's ecc or icc compilers), you will need to modify the generated
+  "libtool" program after configuration is finished. On or around line 104 of
+  the libtool file, there are lines which look like:
+
+      # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
+      wl=""
+
+  change these lines to this:
+
+      # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
+      wl="-Wl,"
+
+  UPDATE: This is now done automatically by the configure script. However, if
+  you still experience a problem, you may want to check this line in the
+  libtool file and make sure that it has the correct value.
+
+* Information about building with PGI and Intel compilers is available in
+  INSTALL file sections 5.7 and 5.8
+
+* 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 HDF 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 
+  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 h5copy tool
+
+%%%%1.6.7%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.6.7 (31/January/08)
+
+HDF5 version 1.6.7 released on Thu Jan 31 21:09:10 CST 2008
+================================================================================
+
+INTRODUCTION
+============
+This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.6.6 and HDF5-1.6.7  
+It contains information on the platforms tested and known problems in
+HDF5-1.6.7. For more details, check the HISTORY.txt file in the HDF5 source.
+
+HDF5 documentation can be found in the distributed release source code
+in the subdirectory doc/html/ or on the THG (The HDF Group) FTP server: 
+
+     ftp://ftp.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/docs/
+
+Documentation for the current release in the HDF5 Release 1.6.x series is 
+also on the HDF web site:
+
+     http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc1.6/
+
+For more information, see the HDF5 home page:
+
+     http://hdfgroup.org/products/hdf5/
+
+If you have any questions or comments, please see the HDF Support page
+for a list of available resources:
+
+     http://hdfgroup.org/services/support.html
+
+
+CONTENTS
+========
+- New Features
+- Support for New Platforms, Languages and Compilers
+- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.6.6
+- Documentation
+- Platforms Tested
+- Supported Configuration Features Summary
+- Known Problems
+
+
+New Features
+============
+    Configuration:
+    -------------------------
+    '--enable-stream-vfd' and '--disable-stream-vfd' are no longer valid 
+    configure options because the stream I/O driver has ben removed from
+    the distribution.
+
+    Source code distribution
+    ========================
+    Library:
+    --------
+    The stream I/O driver is not included with the HDF5 Library in this
+    release.  The source code files hdf5/src/H5FDstream.c and
+    hdf5/src/H5FDstream.h and the driver ENUM value H5FD_STREAM have been 
+    removed.
+
+    Parallel Library:
+    -----------------
+    None      
+
+    Tools:
+    ------
+    None
+
+    F90 API:
+    --------
+    None
+
+    C++ API:
+    --------
+    None
+
+
+Support for New Platforms, Languages and Compilers
+==================================================
+
+No new platorms, languages, or compilers are supported in this release.
+
+
+Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.6.6 Release
+==================================
+
+    Library
+    -------
+        - H5Iget_name could not be used with an object identifier returned  
+            by H5Rdereference; the function would not be able to determine 
+            a valid object name.  It has been fixed.  SLU - 2008/1/30 
+        - Changed library's behavior for reading files that might have
+            corrupted object header information from a previous (buggy)
+            version of the library.  By default, the library now rebuilds the
+            correct object header information instead of issuing an error.
+            Previous "strict" file format interpretation can be enabled with
+            the "--enable-strict-format-checks" configure option.
+            QAK - 2008/01/13
+        - Fixed bug in H5Epush() which was clearing the error stack before
+            pushing new error value.  QAK - 2007/08/23
+        - Fixed bug in H5Ewalk() which was not passing back the return value
+            from error stack walking callback.  QAK - 2007/08/23
+
+
+    Configuration
+    -------------
+     None
+
+
+    Performance
+    -------------
+     None
+   
+
+    Tools
+    -----
+     None
+
+
+    Documentation 
+    ------------- 
+     None
+
+
+    F90 API
+    -------
+     None
+
+                                
+    C++ API
+    -------
+     None
+
+
+Documentation
+=============
+    HDF5 documentation can be found in the distributed release source 
+    code in the subdirectory doc/html/ (start with index.html) or on the 
+    THG (The HDF Group) FTP server: 
+
+         ftp://ftp.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/docs/
+
+    Online documentation for the current release in the HDF5 Release 1.6.x 
+    series can be found on the THG web site:
+
+         http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc1.6/
+
+    A listing of interface changes from release to release can be found
+    in the document "HDF5 Software Changes from Release to Release":
+
+         http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc1.6/ADGuide/Changes.html
+ 
+    Since the stream I/O driver is not included in this release, the 
+    functions H5Pset_fapl_stream and H5Pget_fapl_stream and the stream 
+    ENUM value H5FD_STREAM have been removed from the documentation.
+
+
+Platforms Tested
+================
+
+    AIX 5.2 (32/64 bit)           xlc 8.0.0.11
+    (datastar)                    xlC 8.0
+                                  xlf 10.01.0000.0002
+
+    FreeBSD 6.2 (32- and 64-bit)  gcc  and g++3.4.6
+    (duty and liberty)            gcc and g++ 4.2.1
+
+    IRIX64 6.5                    MIPSpro cc 7.4.4m
+    (ucar mop1 64 & n32)          F90 MIPSpro 7.4.4m (64 only)
+                                  C++ MIPSpro cc 7.4.4m
+
+    Linux 2.4.21-47.ELsmp #1 SMP  gcc 3.2.3
+        i686 i386 GNU/Linux
+    (osage)
+
+    Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10.ELsmp #1  gcc (GCC) 3.4.6
+         SMP i686 i386             G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.91!) April 18 2007)
+    (kagiso)                      PGI C, Fortran, C++ 7.0-7 32-bit 
+                                  Intel(R) C Compiler for 32-bit 
+                                      applications, Version 9.1 
+                                  Intel(R) C++ Compiler for 32-bit 
+                                      applications, Version 9.1
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler for 32-bit 
+                                      applications, Version 9.1 
+                                  Absoft 32-bit Fortran 95 10.0.4
+                                  MPICH mpich2-1.0.6p1 compiled with  
+                                  gcc 4.2.1 and G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.91!) 
+
+    Linux 2.6.16.46-0.12-debug #1 Intel(R) C++ Version 10.0.025
+        SMP ia64 GNU/Linux        Intel(R) Fortran Itanium(R) Version 10.0.025
+    (ucar hir1)                   
+
+    Linux 2.6.16.46-0.14-smp #1   Intel(R) C++ for Intel(R) EM64T Ver. 9.1.037
+        SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux      Intel(R) Fortran Intel(R) EM64T Ver. 9.1.031
+    (smirom)                      PGI C, Fortran, C++ Version 7.0-7
+                                         for 64-bit target on x86-64
+                                  tested for both 32- and 64-bit binaries
+
+    Linux 2.6.5-7.287.3-sn2 #1    Intel(R) C++ Version 9.0
+        Altix SMP ia64            Intel(R) Fortran Itanium(R) Version 9.0
+    (cobalt)                      SGI MPI
+
+    SunOS 5.8 32- and 64-bit      Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C 5.3
+    (sol)                         Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 Fortran 95 6.2
+                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C++ 5.3
+
+    SunOS 5.10 32- and 64-bit     Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C 5.8
+    (linew)                       Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 Fortran 95 8.2
+                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C++ 5.8
+                                  Patch 121019-06 
+
+    Xeon Linux 2.4.21-32.0.1.ELsmp-perfctr-lustre
+    (tungsten)                    Intel(R) C++ Version 9.0
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 9.0
+                                  PGI C Version 6.0-5
+                                  PGI C++ Version 6.0-5
+                                  PGI Fortran Version 6.0-5
+                                  gcc (GCC) 3.2.2 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-5)
+
+    Xeon Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10.EL_lustre-1.4.10.1smp
+    (abe)                         Intel(R) C++ Version 10.0
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 10.0
+                                  Open MPI 1.2.2
+
+    IA-64 Linux 2.4.21-309.tg1 #1 SMP
+        ia64                      gcc (GCC) 3.2.2
+    (NCSA tg-login)               Intel(R) C++ Version 8.1
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 8.1
+                                  mpich-gm-1.2.6..14-intel-r2
+
+    Windows XP                    Visual Studio 6.0
+                                  Visual Studio .NET (with Intel Fortran 9.1)
+                                  Visual Studio 2005 (with Intel Fortran 9.1)
+                                  cygwin (gcc 3.4.4)
+
+    Windows Vista                 Visual studio 2005
+    MAC OS X Intel                Darwin 8.10.1
+                                  i686-apple-darwin8-gcc-4.0.1 (GCC) 4.0.1
+                                  g95 0.91
+
+
+Supported Configuration Features Summary
+========================================
+
+Key:   y   = Tested and supported
+       n   = Not supported or not tested in this release
+       C   = Cluster
+       W   = Workstation
+       ( ) = Footnote appears below second table
+
+Platform                              C        F90  F90      C++  zlib  SZIP
+                                      parallel      parallel
+Solaris2.8 32-bit                     n        y    n        y    n     y
+Solaris2.8 64-bit                     n        y    n        n    y     y
+Solaris2.10 32-bit                    n        y    n        y    y     y
+Solaris2.10 64-bit                    n        y    n        n    y     y
+IRIX64_6.5 32-bit                     n        n    n        n    y     y
+IRIX64_6.5 64-bit                     n        y    n        n    y     y
+WinXP Visual Studio 6.0               n        n    n        y    y     y
+WinXP CYGWIN                          n        n    n        y    y     y
+WinXP 2005                            n        y    n        y    y     y
+WinXP .Net                            n        y    n        y    y     y
+WinVista 2005                         n        n    n        y    y     y
+Mac OS X 10.4.10                      n        y    n        y    y     y
+AIX-5.2 & 5.3 32- and 64-bit          y        y    y        y    y     y
+FreeBSD 6.2 32- and 64-bit            n        n    n        y    y     y
+RedHat Linux 2.4.21              W    n        n    n        n    y     n
+RedHat Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 GNU (1) W  y        y    y        y    y     y
+RedHat Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 Intel   W  n        y    n        y    y     n
+RedHat Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 PGI     W  n        y    n        y    y     n
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 GNU (1) W    y        y    n        y    y     y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 Intel   W    n        y    n        y    y     n
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 PGI     W    n        y    n        y    y     n
+RHEL 4 Linux 2.6.9 Xeon Lustre   C    n        y    n        y    y     y
+RedHat Linux 2.4 Xeon Lustre     C    n        y    n        y    y     n
+SuSE Linux 2.4 ia64              C    y        y    y        y    y     y
+SuSe Linux 2.6.5 SGI Altix ia64       n        y    n        y    y     y
+
+
+Platform                              Shared        static-  Thread-  
+                                      libraries(4)  exec     safe     
+Solaris2.8 32- and 64-bit             y             n        y        
+Solaris2.10 32- and 64-bit            y             n        y        
+IRIX64_6.5 32-bit                     y             n        y        
+IRIX64_6.5 64-bit                     y             n        y        
+WinXP Visual Studio 6.0               y             n        n        
+WinXP CYGWIN                          y             n        n        
+WinXP 2005                            y             n        n        
+WinXP .Net                            y             n        n        
+WinVista 2005                         y             n        n        
+Mac OS X 10.4.10                      y             n        n        
+AIX-5.2 & 5.3 32- and 64-bit          n             n        n        
+FreeBSD 6.2 32- and 64-bit            y             n        n        
+RedHat Linux 2.4.21              W    y             n        n        
+SuSE Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 GNU (1) W    y             n        y        
+SuSE Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 Intel   W    y             n        n        
+SuSE Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 PGI     W    n             n        n        
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 GNU (1) W    y             n        y        
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 Intel   W    y             n        n        
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 PGI     W    n             n        n        
+RHEL 4 Linux 2.6.9 Xeon Lustre   C    y             n        n        
+RedHat Linux 2.4 Xeon Lustre     C    y             n        n        
+SuSE Linux 2.4 ia64              C    y             n        n        
+SuSe Linux 2.6.5 SGI Altix ia64       n             n        n        
+
+Compiler versions for each platform are listed in the "Platforms Tested" 
+table found elsewhere in this file (RELEASE.txt).  Unless otherwise noted, 
+compilers used are the system compilers.
+
+Footnotes:
+(1) Fortran compiled with g95.
+
+
+Known Problems
+==============
+* We discovered two problems when running collective IO parallel HDF5 tests
+  with chunking storage with 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.
+  This only happens when turning on collective IO with chunking storage
+  with some complex selections. We haven't found these problems on other 
+  MPI-IO compilers. If you encounter these problems, you may use Independent 
+  IO instead.
+
+  To avoid this problem, 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
+
+* QSC (an HP alpha-based OSF1 cluster) does not create h5pfc correctly. It
+  does not include the -lmpi properly.  This will be fixed in the next
+  release.  AKC - 2007/08/07.
+
+* On IRIX64 6.5 (UCAR SGI mop1), when testing HDF5 tools with an HDF5 shared
+  library, especially for h5repacktst and h52gifgentst, the following (or a
+  similar) error message may appear:
+  "523648:lt-h5repacktst: rld: Fatal Error: Cannot Successfully map soname
+  'libh5test.so.1' under any of the filenames .......(bunch of directories)
+  "
+  And the testing will fail. 
+
+  We believe this is a libtool problem. One way to get rid of this is to
+  add the paths of libh5test.so.1 and libh5.so.1 to the shared library path.
+
+  For 32-bit:
+  You may do this, under csh:
+  setenv LD_LIBRARYN32_PATH .......(existing paths):[full path of HDF5
+  directory/test/.libs]:[full path of HDF5 directory/src/.libs]
+
+  For 64-bit:
+  setenv LD_LIBRARY64_PATH ......(existing paths):[full path of HDF5
+  directory/test/.libs]:[full path of HDF5 directory/src/.libs]
+
+  NOTE: This problem ONLY affects the testing of the HDF5 library when you 
+  build from source. It won't affect any applications that would like to link 
+  with the HDF5 shared library since the shared library path needs to be set 
+  anyway.  KY - 2007/8/2
+
+* QSC (an HP alpha-based OSF1 cluster) failed the testpar/testphdf5 sub-test
+  "calloc".  All other tests passed.  This indicates that a dataset using 
+  chunked storage created by serial HDF5 may not work properly with parallel 
+  HDF5.  The calloc test can be skipped by running "prun ... testphdf5 -x 
+  calloc".  AKC - 2007/7/12.
+
+* The Intel C Compiler for the Linux x86_64 platform (EM64T-based, v8.1) has
+  an optimization error in the datatypes conversion code.  Before running
+  configure, edit the file config/intel-flags by changing the setting of
+  PROD_CFLAGS from -O3 to -O0.  Then run configure.  AKC - 2005/11/10.
+
+* When testing parallel HDF5 with the C compiler version MIPSpro 7.4.3 on IRIX
+  6.5, set the environment variable MPI_TYPE_MAX to be a bigger number, for 
+  example 120000, in order to pass the complicated collective IO tests inside 
+  the parallel HDF5 library. This is not a problem inside the parallel HDF5 
+  library. You can always set a bigger number on your system.  KY - 2005/10/6
+
+* A contiguous or chunked dataset created by a sequential version of HDF5 
+  might not be able to be modified with a parallel version of the library. 
+  Use the H5Pset_alloc_time function with H5D_ALLOC_TIME_EARLY to set up the 
+  dataset creation property list to avoid the problem.  EIP - 2005/09/09
+
+* A dataset created or rewritten with the v1.6.3 library or after can't 
+  be read with the v1.6.2 library or before when Fletcher32 EDC (a filter) is 
+  enabled.  There was a bug in the calculating code of the Fletcher32 
+  checksum in the library before v1.6.3.  The checksum value wasn't 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 is no 
+  longer the same as before on little-endian system.  HDF5 library releases 
+  after 1.6.4 can still read datasets created or rewritten with an HDF5 
+  library of v1.6.2 or before.  SLU - 2005/7/8
+
+* For version 6 (6.02 and 6.04) of the Portland Group compiler on AMD Opteron
+  processor, there's 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.  
+
+* test/big fails sometimes with the message "Possible overlap with another
+  region."  The test selects regions randomly, and this error occurs when
+  two regions overlap each other; it is a bug in the test and not in
+  HDF5.  Since the error is triggered by a random situation, it will
+  usually disappear if the test is re-run.
+
+* Newer SGI MIPSpro compilers (version 7.4.x) support C99 features but 
+  have a "guard" statement in stdint.h that will #error and skip the rest
+  of the header file if the C99 option is not used explicitly.  Hardsetting
+  $CC to c99 will resolve the problem. AKC - 2004/12/13
+
+* 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 also fail with messages like "The socket name is already
+  in use".  HDF5 does not use sockets.  This is due to problems of the 
+  poe command trying to set up the debug socket.  Check 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.  Ask your system 
+  administrator to clean them out.  Lastly, request IBM to provide a means 
+  to run poe without the debug socket.
+
+* The h5dump tests may fail to match the expected output on some platforms
+  (e.g. parallel jobs, Windows) where the error messages directed to
+  "stderr" do not appear in the "right order" with output from stdout.
+  This is not an error.
+
+* 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 the IBM SP2 platform for the serial mode. The parallel mode works fine
+  with this option.
+
+  The --enable-static-exec configure flag also fails to correctly compile
+  on the HPUX 11.00.
+  
+  It is suggested that you don't use this option on these platforms
+  during configuration.
+
+* Use the --disable-shared configure flag if building with an Absoft Fortran
+  compiler.
+
+* Information about building with PGI and Intel compilers is available in
+  INSTALL file sections 5.7 and 5.8.
+
+* In LANL QSC, the new cc compiler has problems converting small values of
+  long long (absolute values less than 1**-308) to double.  This triggers
+  the test/dtypes to report failure in the following test:
+      Testing random sw long double -> double conversions
+  If -ieee is used, the converted doubles spread over the range 0.0 to 
+  10**-308.  If -ieee is not used, the converted double values are mostly 
+  0.0, but occasionally appear as 10**-308.  This has been reported to the 
+  system staff.
+
+  All other tests have passed.
+
+* 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 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 scripts 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.  JM - 2004/9/15
+
+%%%%1.6.6%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.6.6 (16/August/08)
+
+HDF5 version 1.6.6 released on Thu Aug 16 11:17:10 CDT 2007
+================================================================================
+
+INTRODUCTION
+============
+This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.6.5 and
+HDF5-1.6.6  It contains information on the platforms tested and
+known problems in HDF5-1.6.6. For more details, check the HISTORY.txt
+file in the HDF5 source.
+
+HDF5 documentation can be found in the distributed release source 
+code in the subdirectory doc/html/ or on the THG (The HDF Group) 
+ftp server (ftp.hdfgroup.org) in the directory:
+
+     /HDF5/docs/
+
+Documentation for the current release is also on the HDF web site:
+
+     http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/
+
+For more information, see the HDF5 home page at:
+
+    http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/
+
+If you have any questions or comments, please send them to:
+
+    help@hdfgroup.org
+
+
+CONTENTS
+========
+- New Features
+- Support for New Platforms, Languages and Compilers
+- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.6.5
+- Documentation
+- Platforms Tested
+- Supported Configuration Features Summary
+- Known Problems
+
+
+New Features
+============
+    Configuration:
+    -------------------------
+        - HDF5 now uses autoconf 2.61 to generate configure. MAM - 2007/7/25.
+
+    Source code distribution
+    ========================
+    Library:
+    --------
+        - None
+
+    Parallel Library:
+    -----------------
+        - None
+      
+    Tools:
+    ------
+        - h52gif and gif2h5: Both these tools were revised to include High
+            Level Image API support.  Tests were added to /hl/tools/gif2h5.
+            PVN - 2007/04/13
+        - h5dump: Added support for double long type H5T_NATIVE_LDOUBLE. 
+            PVN - 2007/03/13
+        - h5dump: Added support for binary output; see usage. PVN 2007/03/13
+        - h5repack: Added support for reading and writing by hyperslabs for
+            large files. PVN - 2007/03/01
+        - h5repack: A new option allows the copy to use the source file type
+            (default) instead of the previous conversion to native type. 
+            PVN - 2007/03/01
+        - h5repack: Added output of the percentage of compression achieved. 
+            PVN - 2007/03/01
+        - h5diff: Added support for comparing dataset regions. PVN -
+          2007/02/20
+        - h5diff: Added support for reading and comparing by hyperslabs for 
+            large files.  PVN - 2007/02/20
+        - h5diff: Added printing of dataset dimensions along with dataset
+          name. 
+            PVN - 2007/02/19
+
+    F90 API:
+    --------
+        - None
+
+    C++ API:
+    --------
+        - Added support for Szip: DSetCreatPropList::setSzip - BMR 2007/01/24
+
+
+Support for New Platforms, Languages and Compilers
+==================================================
+        - Added support for MAC Intel (Darwin 8.8.2)  (gcc 4.0.1 and g95 0.91)
+                                EIP - 2007/02/13
+        - Added support for GNU C compiler version 4.2.1 for FreeBSD 6.2 
+          (32- and 64-bit)
+
+
+Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.6.5 Release
+==================================
+
+    Library
+    -------
+        - Fixed several bugs with writing fill values for datasets that have
+            a variable-length datatype or component datatype.  QAK -
+2007/06/19
+        - STDIO driver didn't support files bigger than 2GB because the OFFSET
+            parameter of fseek is of type LONG INT, not big enough for big 
+            files.  Use fseeko instead for big files if it's available on the 
+            system.  SLU - 2007/4/5
+        - Relaxed restrictions on attribute operations to allow a file ID to
+            be used as the "location ID".  If a file ID is used, the attribute
+            operation will occur on the root group of the file.
+            QAK - 2007/02/09
+        - Fixed a bug in H5Sselect_valid() that caused an incorrect value to
+            be returned (0) instead of FAIL on error conditions such as the
+            selection or extent not being defined. CMC - 2007/01/05
+        - Fixed potential file corruption bug which could overwrite a portion
+            of an object's header when an attribute was renamed.  If the new
+            name for the attribute was longer than the old name, it was
+possible
+            that the attribute would grow enough to overwrite another message
+            in the object's header.  QAK - 2007/01/02
+        - Fixed file corruption bug which could write an incorrect number of
+            messages to an object's header under certain circumstances.
+            Generally, the sequence of actions to generate this bug looks
+            like this:
+                - Create an object.
+                - Close the file.
+                - Re-open the file.
+                - Add 2 (or more) attributes to the object.
+                - Close the file.
+                - Re-open the file.
+                - Delete one of the attributes on the object.
+                - Add a smaller attribute to the object.
+                - Delete the smaller atttribute on the object.
+                - Add a larger attribute on the object.
+
+            After this, the number of header messages stored for the object
+            will be off by one.  Other sequences of modifying attributes on an
+            object could also trigger this bug.  If you are opening an
+            object and the bottom few messages of the HDF5 error stack
+            resembles the following, the object has been affected by this bug:
+
+              #007: ../../hdf5_v1.6/src/H5C.c line 3887 in H5C_load_entry():
+unable to load entry
+                major(08): Meta data cache layer
+                minor(40): Unable to load metadata into cache
+              #008: ../../hdf5_v1.6/src/H5Ocache.c line 332 in H5O_load():
+corrupt object header - too few messages
+                major(12): Object header layer
+                minor(40): Unable to load metadata into cache
+
+            Specifically, "corrupt object header" is the best string to search
+            for in the HDF5 error stack output.
+
+            If your files have been affected by this bug, or you are concerned
+            that your files might have been, please contact the HDF Helpdesk
+            at help@hdfgroup.org for a tool to detect and repair files
+            affected by this problem.  QAK - 2006/6/16
+
+        - Fixed various problems with retrieving names of objects, especially
+            with mounted files.  QAK - 2005/12/25
+
+    Configuration
+    -------------
+        - Changed to default to --disable-shared if parallel is enabled. 
+            AKC - 2007/5/12
+        - Corrected a coding error in configure when it tries to locate the
+          needed MPI and MPI-IO library for the fortran interface. 
+            AKC - 007/5/9.
+        - Changed default fortran compiler to g95 when gcc is used. 
+            AKC - 007/2/17.
+        - Configure can now use any tr command.  No more need for
+            defining the variable TR, nor is it supported.  AKC - 2006/05/20
+
+    Performance
+    -------------
+        - None
+   
+    Tools
+    -----
+        - Fixed a bug in h5dump regarding the display of named datatypes
+            attributes. PVN - 2007/03/13
+        - Fixed a bug in h5dump regarding the display of group comments. 
+            PVN - 2007/03/13
+        - Fixed a bug in h5dump regarding the display of hardlinks pointing 
+            to the root group.  PVN - 2007/03/13
+        - Fixed a bug in the h5diff percentage option -p.  PVN - 2007/03/05
+        - Fixed a bug in h5dump that caused array indices greater than 2^32-1
+            not to be printed correctly.  PVN - 2007/2/19
+
+    Documentation 
+    ------------- 
+        - Corrected errors and extended the descriptions in Reference Manual 
+            entries for several functions.  
+
+    F90 API
+    -------
+        - None
+                                
+    C++ API
+    -------
+          - Changed
+                  StrType::StrType(const size_t& size);
+            to
+                  StrType::StrType(const int dummy, const size_t& size);
+            because the first one clashed with
+                  StrType::StrType(const hid_t existing_id); - BMR 2007/05/03
+          - Wrappers of H5Rcreate had incorrect prototypes.  Added these
+            overloaded functions:
+                  IdComponent::reference(void* ref, const char* name,
+DataSpace&
+                          dataspace, H5R_type_t ref_type = H5R_DATASET_REGION)
+                  IdComponent::void reference(void* ref, const char* name)
+                  IdComponent::reference(void* ref, const H5std_string& name)
+            and will remove these incorrect member functions:
+                  DataSet::Reference
+                  DataType::Reference
+                  Group::Reference
+                  H5File::Reference
+          - Added wrappers for H5Rdereference as constructors:
+                  DataSet(IdComponent& obj, void* ref);
+                  Group(IdComponent& obj, void* ref);
+                  DataType(IdComponent& obj, void* ref);
+
+
+Documentation
+=============
+
+    HDF5 documentation can be found in the distributed release source 
+    code in the subdirectory doc/html/ (start with index.html) or on the 
+    THG (The HDF Group) ftp server (ftp.hdfgroup.org) in the directory:
+
+         /HDF5/docs/
+
+    Online documentation for the current release can be found on the THG 
+    web site:
+
+         http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/
+
+
+Platforms Tested
+================
+
+    AIX 5.2 (32/64 bit)           xlc 6.0.0.8
+    (datastar)                    xlC 6.0.0.9
+                                  xlf 8.1.1.7
+                                  mpcc_r 6.0.0.8
+                                  mpxlf_r 8.1.1.7
+
+    AIX 5.3 (32/64 bit)           xlc 7.0.0.0
+    (copper)                      xlC 7.0.
+                                  xlf 9.1.0.3
+
+    FreeBSD 6.2 (32- and 64-bit)  gcc  and g++3.4.6
+    (duty and liberty)            gcc and g++ 4.2.1
+
+    HP-UX B.11.23                 HP aC++/ANSI C B3910B A.06.02
+    (sirius)                      HP F90 v3.1 (32-bit only)
+                                  HP aC++/ANSI C B3910B A.06.02
+
+    IRIX64 6.5                    MIPSpro cc 7.4.4m
+    (ucar mop1 64 & n32)          F90 MIPSpro 7.4.4m (64 only)
+                                  C++ MIPSpro cc 7.4.4m
+
+    Linux 2.4.21-47.ELsmp #1 SMP  gcc 3.2.3
+        i686 i386 GNU/Linux
+    (osage)
+
+    Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10.ELsmp #1  gcc (GCC) 3.4.6
+        SMP i686 i386             G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.91!) Nov 21 2006)
+    (kagiso)                      PGI C, Fortran, C++ 6.2-5 32-bit 
+                                  icc (ICC) 9.1 
+                                  Intel(R) C++ Compiler for 32-bit 
+                                      applications, Version 9.1
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler for 32-bit 
+                                      applications, Version 9.1 
+                                  Absoft 32-bit Fortran 95 10.0.4
+                                  MPICH mpich2-1.0.4p1 compiled with  
+                                  gcc 3.4.6 and G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.91!) 
+
+    Linux 2.6.16.46-0.12-debug #1 
+        SMP ia64 GNU/Linux        Intel(R) C++ Version 10.0.025
+    (ucar hir1)                   Intel(R) Fortran Itanium(R) Version 10.0.025
+
+    Linux 2.6.16.46-0.14-smp #1   Intel(R) C++ for Intel(R) EM64T Ver. 9.1.037
+        SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux      Intel(R) Fortran Intel(R) EM64T Ver. 9.1.031
+    (smirom)                      PGI C, Fortran, C++ Version 6.2-5
+                                         for 64-bit target on x86-64
+                                  tested for both 32- and 64-bit binaries
+
+    Linux 2.6.5-7.283-rtgfx Altix 
+        SMP ia64                  Intel(R) C++ Version 9.0
+    (cobalt)                      Intel(R) Fortran Itanium(R) Version 9.0
+                                  SGI MPI
+
+    OSF1 V5.1 (QSC)               Compaq C V6.5-011 
+    (See "Known Problems.")       HP Fortran V5.5A-3548
+                                  Compaq C++ V6.5-036  
+                                  MPIX200_64_r13.4
+
+    SunOS 5.8 32- and 64-bit      Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C 5.3
+    (sol)                         Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 Fortran 95 6.2
+                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C++ 5.3
+
+    SunOS 5.10 32- and 64-bit     Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C 5.8
+    (linew)                       Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 Fortran 95 8.2
+                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C++ 5.8
+                                  Patch 121019-06 
+
+    Xeon Linux 2.4.21-32.0.1.ELsmp-perfctr-lustre
+    (tungsten)                    Intel(R) C++ Version 9.0
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 9.0
+                                  PGI C Version 6.0
+                                  PGI C++ Version 6.0
+                                  PGI Fortran Version 6.0
+                                  gcc (GCC) 3.2.2 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-5)
+
+    Xeon Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10.EL_lustre-1.4.10.1smp
+    (abe)                         Intel(R) C++ Version 10.0
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 10.0
+                                  Open MPI 1.2.2
+
+    IA-64 Linux 2.4.21.SuSE_292.til1
+        ia64                      gcc (GCC) 3.2.2
+    (NCSA tg-login)               Intel(R) C++ Version 8.0
+                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 8.0
+                                  mpich-gm-1.2.5..10-intel-r2
+
+    Windows XP                    Visual Studio 6.0
+                                  Visual Studio .NET (with Intel Fortran 9.0)
+                                  Visual Studio 2005 (with Intel Fortran 9.0)
+                                  cygwin (gcc 3.4.4)
+
+    MAC OS X Intel                Darwin 8.10.1
+                                  i686-apple-darwin8-gcc-4.0.1 (GCC) 4.0.1
+                                  g95 0.91
+
+
+Supported Configuration Features Summary
+========================================
+
+Key:   y   = Tested and supported
+       n   = Not supported or not tested in this release
+       C   = Cluster
+       W   = Workstation
+       ( ) = Footnote appears below second table
+
+Platform                              C        F90  F90      C++  zlib  SZIP
+                                      parallel      parallel
+Solaris2.8 32- and 64-bit             n        y    n        y    y     y
+Solaris2.10 32- and 64-bit            n        y    n        y    y     y
+IRIX64_6.5 32-bit                     n        n    n        n    y     y
+IRIX64_6.5 64-bit                     n        y    n        n    y     y
+HPUX11.23-32bit                       n        y    n        y    y     y
+HPUX11.23-64bit                       n        n    n        y    y     y
+WinXP Visual Studio 6.0               n        n    n        y    y     y
+WinXP CYGWIN                          n        n    n        y    y     y
+WinXP 2005                            n        y    n        y    y     y
+WinXP .Net                            n        y    n        y    y     y
+Mac OS X 10.4.10                      n        y    n        y    y     y
+AIX-5.2 & 5.3 32- and 64-bit          y        y    y        y    y     y
+FreeBSD 6.2 32- and 64-bit            n        n    n        y    y     y
+RedHat Linux 2.4.21              W    n        n    n        y    y     y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 GNU (1) W    y        y    y        y    y     y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 Intel   W    n        y    n        y    y     y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 PGI     W    n        y    n        y    y     y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 GNU (1) W    y        y    y        y    y     y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 Intel   W    n        y    n        y    y     y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 PGI     W    n        y    n        y    y     y
+RHEL 4 Linux 2.6.9 Xeon Lustre   C    y        y    y        y    y     y
+RedHat Linux 2.4 Xeon Lustre     C    n        y    n        y    y     y
+SuSE Linux 2.4 ia64              C    y        y    y        y    y     y
+SuSe Linux 2.6.16 SGI Altix ia64      n        y    n        y    y     y
+SuSe Linux 2.6.5 SGI Altix ia64       n        y    n        y    y     y
+OSF1 v5.1                             y        y    y        y    y     n
+
+
+Platform                              Shared        static-  Thread-  STREAM-
+                                      libraries(4)  exec     safe     VFD
+Solaris2.8 32- and 64-bit             y             n        y        y
+Solaris2.10 32- and 64-bit            y             n        y        y
+IRIX64_6.5 32-bit                     y             n        y        y
+IRIX64_6.5 64-bit                     y             n        y        y
+HPUX11.23-32bit                       y (3)         n        n        y
+HPUX11.23-64bit                       y (3)         n        n        y
+WinXP Visual Studio 6.0               y             n        n        n
+WinXP CYGWIN                          y             n        n        n
+WinXP 2005                            y             n        n        n
+WinXP .Net                            y             n        n        n
+Mac OS X 10.4.10                      y             n        n        y
+AIX-5.2 & 5.3 32- and 64-bit          n             n        n        y
+FreeBSD 6.2 32- and 64-bit            y             n        n        y
+RedHat Linux 2.4.21              W    y             n        n        y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 GNU (1) W    y             n        y        y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 Intel   W    y             n        n        y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.9-42 i686 PGI     W    n             n        n        y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 GNU (1) W    y             n        n        y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 Intel   W    y             n        n        y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 PGI     W    n             n        n        y
+RHEL 4 Linux 2.6.9 Xeon Lustre   C    y             n        n        y
+RedHat Linux 2.4 Xeon Lustre     C    y             n        n        y
+SuSE Linux 2.4 ia64              C    y             n        n        y
+SuSe Linux 2.6.16 SGI Altix ia64      n             n        n        y
+SuSe Linux 2.6.5 SGI Altix ia64       n             n        n        y
+OSF1 v5.1                             n             n        n        y
+
+Compiler versions for each platform are listed in the "Platforms Tested" 
+table found elsewhere in this file (RELEASE.txt).  Unless otherwise noted, 
+compilers used are the system compilers.
+
+Footnotes:
+(1) Fortran compiled with g95.
+(2) In most cases, shared libraries are provided only for the C library, 
+    except on Windows where they are provided for C, C++, and Fortran.
+(3) C++ works only with static libraries.
+
+
+Known Problems
+==============
+* QSC (an HP alpha-based OSF1 cluster) does not create h5pfc correctly. It
+  does not include the -lmpi properly.  This will be fixed in the next
+  release.  AKC - 2007/08/07.
+
+* On IRIX64 6.5 (UCAR SGI mop1), when testing HDF5 tools with an HDF5 shared
+  library, especially for h5repacktst and h52gifgentst, the following (or
+  similar) error message may appear:
+  "523648:lt-h5repacktst: rld: Fatal Error: Cannot Successfully map soname
+  'libh5test.so.1' under any of the filenames .......(bunch of directories)
+  "
+  And the testing will fail. 
+  We believe this is a libtool problem. One way to get rid of this is to
+  add the paths of libh5test.so.1 and libh5.so.1 to the shared library path.
+
+  For 32-bit:
+  You may do this, under csh:
+  setenv LD_LIBRARYN32_PATH .......(existing pathes):[full path of HDF5
+  directory/test/.libs]:[full path of HDF5 directory/src/.libs]
+
+  For 64-bit:
+  setenv LD_LIBRARY64_PATH ......(existing pathes):[full path of HDF5
+  directory/test/.libs]:[full path of HDF5 directory/src/.libs]
+
+  NOTE: This problem ONLY affects the testing of the HDF5 library when you 
+  build from source. It won't affect any applications that would like to link 
+  with the HDF5 shared library since the shared library path needs to be set 
+  anyway.  KY - 2007/8/2
+
+* QSC (an HP alpha-based OSF1 cluster) failed the testpar/testphdf5 sub-test
+  "calloc".  All other tests passed.  This indicates that a dataset using 
+  chunked storage created by serial HDF5 may not work properly with parallel 
+  HDF5.  The calloc test can be skipped by running "prun ... testphdf5 -x 
+  calloc".  AKC - 2007/7/12.
+
+* The Intel C Compiler for the Linux x86_64 platform (EM64T-based, v8.1) has
+  an optimization error in the datax types conversion code.  Before running
+  configure, edit the file config/intel-flags by changing the setting of
+  PROD_CFLAGS from -O3 to -O0.  Then run configure.  AKC - 2005/11/10.
+
+* When testing parallel HDF5 with the C compiler version MIPSpro 7.4.3 on IRIX
+  6.5, set the environment variable MPI_TYPE_MAX to be a bigger number, for 
+  example 120000, in order to pass the complicated collective IO tests inside 
+  the parallel HDF5 library. This is not a problem inside the parallel HDF5 
+  library. You can always set a bigger number on your system.  KY - 2005/10/6
+
+* A contiguous or chunked dataset created by a sequential version of HDF5 
+  might not be able to be modified with a parallel version of the library. 
+  Use the H5Pset_alloc_time function with H5D_ALLOC_TIME_EARLY to set up the 
+  dataset creation property list to avoid the problem.  EIP - 2005/09/09
+
+* The dataset created or rewritten with the v1.6.3 library or after can't 
+  be read with the v1.6.2 library or before when Fletcher32 EDC (a filter) is 
+  enabled.  There was a bug in the calculating code of the Fletcher32 
+  checksum in the library before v1.6.3.  The checksum value wasn't 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 is no 
+  longer the same as before on little-endian system.  The library release 
+  after 1.6.4 can still read the dataset created or rewritten with the library
+  of v1.6.2 or before.  SLU - 2005/7/8
+
+* For version 6 (6.02 and 6.04) of the Portland Group compiler on AMD Opteron
+  processor, there's 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.  
+
+* test/big fails sometimes with the message "Possible overlap with another
+  region."  The test selects regions randomly, and this error occurs when
+  two regions overlap each other; it is a bug in the test and not in
+  HDF5.  Since the error is triggered by a random situation, it will
+  usually disappear if the test is re-run.
+
+* Newer SGI MIPSpro compilers (version 7.4.x) support C99 features but 
+  have a "guard" statement in stdint.h that will #error and skip the rest
+  of the header file if the C99 option is not used explicitly.  Hardsetting
+  $CC to c99 will resolve the problem. AKC - 2004/12/13
+
+* 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 also fail with messages like "The socket name is already
+  in use".  HDF5 does not use sockets (except for stream-VFD).  This is
+  due to problems of the poe command trying to set up the debug socket.
+  Check 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.
+  Ask your system administrator to clean them out.  Lastly, request IBM
+  to provide a means to run poe without the debug socket.
+
+* The h5dump tests may fail to match the expected output on some platforms
+  (e.g. parallel jobs, Windows) where the error messages directed to
+  "stderr" do not appear in the "right order" with output from stdout.
+  This is not an error.
+
+* The stream-vfd test uses ip port 10007 for testing. If another
+  application is already using that port address, the test will hang
+  indefinitely and has to be terminated by the kill command. To try the
+  test again, change the port address in test/stream_test.c to one not
+  being used in the host.
+
+* 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 the IBM SP2 platform for the serial mode. The parallel mode works fine
+  with this option.
+
+  The --enable-static-exec configure flag also fails to correctly compile
+  on the HPUX 11.00.
+  
+  It is suggested that you don't use this option on these platforms
+  during configuration.
+
+* The Stream VFD is not supported under Windows.
+
+* Use the --disable-shared configure flag if building with Absoft Fortran
+  compiler.
+
+* Information about building with PGI and Intel compilers is available in
+  INSTALL file sections 5.7 and 5.8.
+
+* In LANL QSC, the new cc compiler has problems converting small values of
+  long long (absolute values less than 1**-308) to double.  This triggers
+  the test/dtypes to report failure in the following test:
+      Testing random sw long double -> double conversions
+  If -ieee is used, the converted doubles spread over the range 0.0 to 
+  10**-308.  If -ieee is not used, the converted double values are mostly 
+  0.0, but occasionally appear as 10**-308.  This has been reported to the 
+  system staff.
+
+  All other tests have passed.
+
+* 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 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 scripts 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.  JM - 2004/9/15
+
+
 %%%%1.6.5%%%%   Release Information for hdf5-1.6.5 (10/November/05)
 
 
diff --git a/release_docs/HISTORY-1_9.txt b/release_docs/HISTORY-1_9.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e7648a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/release_docs/HISTORY-1_9.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+ HDF5 HISTORY
+ ============
+ This file contains history of the HDF5 1.9 branch
+ 
+ CONTENTS
+
diff --git a/release_docs/INSTALL b/release_docs/INSTALL
index 1444bf2..4a9a567 100644
--- a/release_docs/INSTALL
+++ b/release_docs/INSTALL
@@ -1,674 +1,733 @@
 
-	Instructions for the Installation of HDF5 Software
-	==================================================
-
-WARNING: This file was not updated for the 1.8.0-beta* releases. If you have any problems with the HDF5
-         installation please contact help@hdfgroup.org
-
-	CONTENTS
-	--------
-	1. Obtaining HDF5
-
-	2. Warnings about compilers
-	2.1. GNU (Intel platforms)
-	2.2. DEC
-	2.3. SGI (Irix64 6.2)
-	2.4. Windows/NT
-
-	3. Quick installation
-	3.1. Windows
-	3.2. RedStorm (Cray XT3)
-
-	4. HDF5 dependencies
-	4.1. Zlib
-	4.2  Szip
-	4.3. MPI and MPI-IO
-
-	5. Full installation instructions for source distributions
-	5.1. Unpacking the distribution
-	5.1.1. Non-compressed tar archive (*.tar)
-	5.1.2. Compressed tar archive (*.tar.Z)
-	5.1.3. Gzip'd tar archive (*.tar.gz)
-	5.1.4. Bzip'd tar archive (*.tar.bz2)
-	5.2. Source vs. Build Directories
-	5.3. Configuring
-	5.3.1. Specifying the installation directories
-	5.3.2. Using an alternate C compiler
-        5.3.3. Configuring for 64-bit support
-	5.3.4. Additional compilation flags
-	5.3.5. Compiling HDF5 wrapper libraries
-	5.3.6. Specifying other programs
-	5.3.7. Specifying other libraries and headers
-	5.3.8. Static versus shared linking
-	5.3.9. Optimization versus symbolic debugging
-	5.3.10. Large (>2GB) vs. small (<2GB) file capability
-	5.3.11. Parallel vs. serial library
-        5.3.12. Threadsafe capability
-        5.3.13. Backward compatibility
-        5.3.14. Network stream capability
-	5.4. Building
-	5.5. Testing
-	5.6. Installing
-	5.7  Building and testing with Intel compilers
-	5.8  Building and testing with PGI compilers
-
-	6. Using the Library
-
-	7. Support
+Instructions for the Installation of HDF5 Software
+==================================================
+
+This file provides instructions for installing the HDF5 software.  
+If you have any problems with the installation, please see The HDF Group's
+support page at the following location:
+
+    http://www.hdfgroup.org/services/support.html
+
+CONTENTS
+--------
+        1. Obtaining HDF5
+
+        2. Quick installation
+        2.1. Windows
+        2.2. RedStorm (Cray XT3)
+
+        3. HDF5 dependencies
+        3.1. Zlib
+        3.2  Szip (optional)
+        3.3. MPI and MPI-IO
+
+        4. Full installation instructions for source distributions
+        4.1. Unpacking the distribution
+        4.1.1. Non-compressed tar archive (*.tar)
+        4.1.2. Compressed tar archive (*.tar.Z)
+        4.1.3. Gzip'd tar archive (*.tar.gz)
+        4.1.4. Bzip'd tar archive (*.tar.bz2)
+        4.2. Source versus build directories
+        4.3. Configuring
+        4.3.1. Specifying the installation directories
+        4.3.2. Using an alternate C compiler
+        4.3.3. Configuring for 64-bit support
+        4.3.4. Additional compilation flags
+        4.3.5. Compiling HDF5 wrapper libraries
+        4.3.6. Specifying other programs
+        4.3.7. Specifying other libraries and headers
+        4.3.8. Static versus shared linking
+        4.3.9. Optimization versus symbolic debugging
+        4.3.10. Parallel versus serial library
+        4.3.11. Threadsafe capability
+        4.3.12. Backward compatibility
+        4.4. Building
+        4.5. Testing
+        4.6. Installing HDF5
+
+        5. Using the Library
+
+        6. Support
+
+        A. Warnings about compilers
+        A.1. GNU (Intel platforms)
+        A.2. DEC
+        A.3. SGI (Irix64 6.2)
+        A.4. Windows/NT
+
+        B. Large (>2GB) versus small (<2GB) file capability
+
+        C. Building and testing with other compilers
+        C.1.  Building and testing with Intel compilers
+        C.2.  Building and testing with PGI compilers
 
 *****************************************************************************
 
 1. Obtaining HDF5
-	The latest supported public release of HDF5 is available from
-	ftp://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/current/src.  For Unix platforms, it is
-	available in tar format compressed with gzip.  For Microsoft Windows,
-        it is in ZIP format.
-
-	The HDF team also makes snapshots of the source code available on
-	a regular basis. These snapshots are unsupported (that is, the
-	HDF team will not release a bug-fix on a particular snapshot;
-	rather any bug fixes will be rolled into the next snapshot).
-	Furthermore, the snapshots have only been tested on a few
-	machines and may not test correctly for parallel applications.
-	Snapshots can be found at
-	ftp://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/pub/outgoing/hdf5/snapshots in a limited
-	number of formats.
-
-
-2. Warnings about compilers
-	OUTPUT FROM THE FOLLOWING COMPILERS SHOULD BE EXTREMELY SUSPECT
-	WHEN USED TO COMPILE THE HDF5 LIBRARY, ESPECIALLY IF
-	OPTIMIZATIONS ARE ENABLED. IN ALL CASES, HDF5 ATTEMPTS TO WORK
-	AROUND THE COMPILER BUGS BUT THE HDF5 DEVELOPMENT TEAM MAKES NO
-	GUARANTEES THAT THERE ARE OTHER CODE GENERATION PROBLEMS.
-
-2.1. GNU (Intel platforms)
-	Versions before 2.8.1 have serious problems allocating registers
-	when functions contain operations on `long long' data types.
-	Supplying the `--disable-hsizet' switch to configure (documented
-	below) will prevent hdf5 from using `long long' data types in
-	situations that are known not to work, but it limits the hdf5
-	address space to 2GB.
-
-2.2. COMPAQ/DEC
-	The V5.2-038 compiler (and possibly others) occasionally
-	generates incorrect code for memcpy() calls when optimizations
-	are enabled, resulting in unaligned access faults. HDF5 works
-	around the problem by casting the second argument to `char *'.
-        The fortran module (5.4.1a) fails in compiling some fortran
-        programs.  Need to use 5.5.0 or more.
-
-2.3. SGI (Irix64 6.2)
-	The Mongoose 7.00 compiler has serious optimization bugs and
-	should be upgraded to MIPSpro 7.2.1.2m. Patches are available
-	from SGI.
-
-2.4. Windows/NT
-	The MicroSoft Win32 5.0 compiler is unable to cast unsigned long
-	long values to doubles. HDF5 works around this bug by first
-	casting to signed long long and then to double.
-
-	A link warning: defaultlib "LIBC" conflicts with use of other libs
-	appears for debug version of VC++ 6.0. This warning will not affect
-	building and testing hdf5 libraries. 
-
-
-3. Quick installation
-	For those that don't like to read ;-) the following steps can be
-	used to configure, build, test, and install the HDF5 library,
-	header files, and support programs.
-
-	    $ gunzip < hdf5-1.6.0.tar.gz | tar xf -
-	    $ cd hdf5-1.6.0
-	    $ make check
-	    $ make install
-
-3.1. Windows
-	Users of Microsoft Windows should see the INSTALL_Windows for
-	detailed instructions.
-
-3.2. RedStorm (Cray Xt3)
-	Users of the Red Storm machine, after reading this file, should read
-	the Red Storm section in the INSTALL_parallel file for specific
-	instructions for the Red Storm machine.  The same instructions would
-	probably work for other Cray XT3 systems but they have not been
-	verified.
-
-
-4. HDF5 dependencies
-4.1. Zlib
-	The HDF5 library has a predefined compression filter that uses
-	the "deflate" method for chunked datatsets. If zlib-1.1.2 or
-	later is found then HDF5 will use it, otherwise HDF5's predefined
-	compression method will degenerate to a no-op (the compression
-	filter will succeed but the data will not be compressed).
-
-4.2. Szip
-	The HDF5 library has a predefined compression filter that uses
-	the extended-Rice lossless compression algorithm for chunked 
-        datatsets. For more information about Szip compression and license terms
-        see http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_resource/SZIP/index.html.
-        Precompiled szip binaries for each supported platform and source tar ball
-        file can be found at ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF5/current/
-
-4.3. MPI and MPI-IO
-	The parallel version of the library is built upon the foundation
-	provided by MPI and MPI-IO. If these libraries are not available
-	when HDF5 is configured then only a serial version of HDF5 can be
-	built.
-
-
-5. Full installation instructions for source distributions
-5.1. Unpacking the distribution
-	The HDF5 source code is distributed in a variety of formats which
-	can be unpacked with the following commands, each of which
-	creates an `hdf5-1.6.0' directory.
-
-5.1.1. Non-compressed tar archive (*.tar)
-
-	    $ tar xf hdf5-1.6.0.tar
-
-5.1.2. Compressed tar archive (*.tar.Z)
-
-	    $ uncompress -c < hdf5-1.6.0.tar.Z | tar xf -
-
-5.1.3. Gzip'd tar archive (*.tar.gz)
-
-	    $ gunzip < hdf5-1.6.0.tar.gz | tar xf -
-
-5.1.4. Bzip'd tar archive (*.tar.bz2)
-
-	    $ bunzip2 < hdf5-1.6.0.tar.bz2 | tar xf -
-
-5.2. Source vs. Build Directories
-	On most systems the build can occur in a directory other than the
-	source directory, allowing multiple concurrent builds and/or
-	read-only source code. In order to accomplish this, one should
-	create a build directory, cd into that directory, and run the
-	`configure' script found in the source directory (configure
-	details are below).
-
-	Unfortunately, this does not work on recent Irix platforms (6.5?
-	and later) because that `make' doesn't understand the VPATH
-	variable. However, hdf5 also supports Irix `pmake' which has a
-	.PATH target which serves a similar purpose. Here's what the man
-	pages say about VPATH, which is the facility used by HDF5
-	makefiles for this feature:
-
-		The VPATH facility is a derivation of the undocumented
-		VPATH feature in the System V Release 3 version of make.
-		System V Release 4 has a new VPATH implementation, much
-		like the pmake(1) .PATH feature. This new feature is also
-		undocumented in the standard System V Release 4 manual
-		pages.  For this reason it is not available in the IRIX
-		version of make. The VPATH facility should not be used
-		with the new parallel make option.
-
-5.3. Configuring
-	HDF5 uses the GNU autoconf system for configuration, which
-	detects various features of the host system and creates the
-	Makefiles. On most systems it should be sufficient to say:
-
-	    $ ./configure		OR
-	    $ sh configure
-
-	The configuration process can be controlled through environment
-	variables, command-line switches, and host configuration files.
-	For a complete list of switches type:
-
-	    $ ./configure --help
-
-	The host configuration files are located in the `config'
-	directory and are based on architecture name, vendor name, and/or
-	operating system which are displayed near the beginning of the
-	`configure' output. The host config file influences the behavior
-	of configure by setting or augmenting shell variables.
-
-5.3.1. Specifying the installation directories
-	Typing `make install' will install the HDF5 library, header
-	files, examples, and support programs in /usr/local/lib,
-	/usr/local/include, /usr/local/doc/hdf5/examples, and 
-        /usr/local/bin. To use a path other than
-	/usr/local specify the path with the `--prefix=PATH' switch:
-
-	    $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME
-
-	If shared libraries are being built (the default) then the final
-	home of the shared library must be specified with this switch
-	before the library and executables are built.
-
-	HDF5 can be installed into a different location than the prefix
-	specified at configure time; see the section on Installing HDF5
-	for more details.
-
-5.3.2. Using an alternate C compiler
-	By default, configure will look for the C compiler by trying
-	`gcc' and `cc'. However, if the environment variable "CC" is set
-	then its value is used as the C compiler (users of csh and
-	derivatives will need to prefix the commands below with `env').
-	For instance, to use the native C compiler on a system which also
-	has the GNU gcc compiler:
-
-	    $ CC=cc ./configure
-
-	A parallel version of hdf5 can be built by specifying `mpicc'
-	as the C compiler (the `--enable-parallel' flag documented
-	below is optional in this case).  Using the `mpicc' compiler
-	will insure that the correct MPI and MPI-IO header files and
-	libraries are used.
-
-	    $ CC=/usr/local/mpi/bin/mpicc ./configure
-
-5.3.3. Configuring for 64-bit support
-	Several machine architectures support 32-bit or 64-bit binaries.
-	The options below describe how to enable support for different options.
-
-	On Irix64 the default compiler is `cc'. To use an alternate
-	compiler specify it with the CC variable:
-
-	    $ CC='cc -n32' ./configure
-
-	Similarly, users compiling on a Solaris machine and desiring to
-	build the distribution with 64-bit support should specify the
-	correct flags with the CC variable:
-
-	    $ CC='cc -xarch=v9' ./configure
-
-	To configure AIX 64-bit support including fortran API and C++,
-	(Note: need to set $AR to 'ar -X 64'.)
-	Serial:
-	    $ CFLAGS=-q64 FFLAGS=-q64 CXXFLAGS=-q64 AR='ar -X 64'\
-	    $ ./configure --enable-fortran
-	Parallel: (C++ not supported with parallel)
-	    $ CFLAGS=-q64 FFLAGS=-q64 AR='ar -X 64'\
-	    $ ./configure --enable-fortran
-
-5.3.4. Additional compilation flags
-	If addtional flags must be passed to the compilation commands
-	then specify those flags with the CFLAGS variable. For instance,
-	to enable symbolic debugging of a production version of HDF5 one
-	might say:
-
-	    $ CFLAGS=-g ./configure --enable-production
-
-5.3.5. Compiling HDF5 wrapper libraries
-	One can optionally build the Fortran and/or C++ interface to the
-	HDF5 C library. By default, both options are disabled. To build
-	them, specify `--enable-fortran' and `--enable-cxx' respectively.
-
-	    $ ./configure --enable-fortran
-	    $ ./configure --enable-cxx
-	
-	Configuration will halt if a working Fortran 90 or 95 compiler or
-	C++ compiler is not found. Currently, the Fortran configure tests
-	for these compilers in order: f90, pgf90, f95. To use an
-	alternative compiler specify it with the F9X variable:
-
-	    $ F9X=/usr/local/bin/g95 ./configure --enable-fortran
-
-	Note: The Fortran and C++ interfaces are not supported on all the
-	platforms the main HDF5 library supports. Also, the Fortran
-	interface supports parallel HDF5 while the C++ interface does
-	not.
-
-        Note:  On Cray T3Es the following files should be modified before
-               building the Fortran Library:
-                 fortran/src/H5Dff.f90
-                 fortran/src/H5Aff.f90
-                 fortran/src/H5Pff.f90
-               Check for "Comment if on T3E ..." comment and comment out 
-               specified lines or use a patch from HDF FTP server
-               ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF5/current/
-
-        Note: See sections 5.7 and 5.8 for how to build Fortran Library with
-              PGI or Intel compilers. 
-
-5.3.6. Specifying other programs
-	The build system has been tuned for use with GNU make but works
-	also with other versions of make.  If the `make' command runs a
-	non-GNU version but a GNU version is available under a different
-	name (perhaps `gmake') then HDF5 can be configured to use it by
-	setting the MAKE variable. Note that whatever value is used for
-	MAKE must also be used as the make command when building the
-	library:
-
-	    $ MAKE=gmake ./configure
-	    $ gmake
-
-	The `AR' and `RANLIB' variables can also be set to the names of
-	the `ar' and `ranlib' (or `:') commands to override values
-	detected by configure.
-
-	The HDF5 library, include files, and utilities are installed
-	during `make install' (described below) with a BSD-compatible
-	install program detected automatically by configure. If none is
-	found then the shell script bin/install-sh is used. Configure
-	doesn't check that the install script actually works, but if a
-	bad install is detected on your system (e.g., on the ASCI blue
-	machine as of March 2, 1999) you have two choices:
-
-	    1. Copy the bin/install-sh program to your $HOME/bin
-	       directory, name it `install', and make sure that $HOME/bin
-	       is searched before the system bin directories.
-
-	    2. Specify the full path name of the `install-sh' program
-	       as the value of the INSTALL environment variable. Note: do
-	       not use `cp' or some other program in place of install
-	       because the HDF5 makefiles also use the install program to
-	       also change file ownership and/or access permissions.
-
-5.3.7. Specifying other libraries and headers
-	Configure searches the standard places (those places known by the
-	systems compiler) for include files and header files. However,
-	additional directories can be specified by using the CPPFLAGS
-	and/or LDFLAGS variables:
-
-	    $ CPPFLAGS=-I/home/robb/include \
+        The latest supported public release of HDF5 is available from
+        ftp://ftp.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/current/src.  For Unix and UNIX-like 
+        platforms, it is available in tar format compressed with gzip.  
+        For Microsoft Windows, it is in ZIP format.
+
+        The HDF team also makes snapshots of the source code available on
+        a regular basis. These snapshots are unsupported (that is, the
+        HDF team will not release a bug-fix on a particular snapshot;
+        rather any bug fixes will be rolled into the next snapshot).
+        Furthermore, the snapshots have only been tested on a few
+        machines and may not test correctly for parallel applications.
+        Snapshots, in a limited number of formats, can be found on THG's 
+        development FTP server:
+
+            ftp://ftp.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/pub/outgoing/hdf5/snapshots 
+
+
+2. Quick installation
+        For those who don't like to read ;-) the following steps can be used
+        to configure, build, test, and install the HDF5 Library, header files,
+        and support programs. For example, to install HDF5 version X.Y.Z at
+        location /usr/local/hdf5, use the following steps.
+
+            $ gunzip < hdf5-X.Y.Z.tar.gz | tar xf -
+            $ cd hdf5-X.Y.Z
+            $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/hdf5 <more configure_flags>
+            $ make
+            $ make check                # run test suite.
+            $ make install
+            $ make check-install        # verify installation.
+
+        Some versions of the tar command support the -z option. In such cases,
+        the first step above can be simplified to the following:
+
+            $ tar zxf hdf5-X.Y.Z.tar.gz
+
+        <configure_flags> above refers to the configure flags appropriate
+        to your installation.  For example, to install HDF5 with the 
+        Fortran and C++ interfaces and with SZIP compression, the 
+        configure line might read as follows:
+        
+            $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/hdf5 --enable-fortran \
+                          --enable-cxx --with-szlib=PATH_TO_SZIP
+
+        In this case, PATH_TO_SZIP would be replaced with the path to the 
+        installed location of the SZIP library.
+
+2.1. Windows
+        Users of Microsoft Windows should see the INSTALL_Windows files for
+        detailed instructions.
+
+2.2. RedStorm (Cray XT3)
+        Users of the Red Storm machine, after reading this file, should read
+        the Red Storm section in the INSTALL_parallel file for specific
+        instructions for the Red Storm machine.  The same instructions would
+        probably work for other Cray XT3 systems, but they have not been
+        verified.
+
+
+3. HDF5 dependencies
+3.1. Zlib
+        The HDF5 Library includes a predefined compression filter that 
+        uses the "deflate" method for chunked datasets. If zlib-1.1.2 or
+        later is found, HDF5 will use it.  Otherwise, HDF5's predefined
+        compression method will degenerate to a no-op; the compression
+        filter will succeed but the data will not be compressed.
+
+3.2. Szip (optional)
+        The HDF5 Library includes a predefined compression filter that 
+        uses the extended-Rice lossless compression algorithm for chunked 
+        datasets. For more information about Szip compression and license 
+        terms, see http://hdfgroup.org/doc_resource/SZIP/.
+
+        Precompiled Szip binaries for each supported platform and a source 
+        tar file can be found at ftp://ftp.hdfgroup.org/lib-external/szip/.
+        
+        To configure the HDF5 Library with the Szip compression filter, use 
+        the '--enable-szlib=/PATH_TO_SZIP' flag. For more information, see 
+        section 4.3.7, "Specifying other libraries and headers."
+
+        Starting with release 1.6.3, Szip library binaries are distributed 
+        with the encoder enabled (a license may be required to use this binary) 
+        and with the encoder disabled (freely usable without a license). 
+        If the encoder enabled binary is used, Szip compression encoding is 
+        available for an HDF5 application; if the encoder disabled binary is 
+        used, Szip compression is not available.  Szip decoding is always 
+        available for applications (i.e., an HDF5 application can always read 
+        Szip-compressed data) if the Szip filter is present, regardless of the 
+        binary used.
+
+3.3. MPI and MPI-IO
+        The parallel version of the library is built upon the foundation
+        provided by MPI and MPI-IO. If these libraries are not available
+        when HDF5 is configured, only a serial version of HDF5 can be built.
+
+
+4. Full installation instructions for source distributions
+
+4.1. Unpacking the distribution
+        The HDF5 source code is distributed in a variety of formats which
+        can be unpacked with the following commands, each of which creates an
+        'hdf5-X.Y.Z' directory, where X.Y.Z is the HDF5 version numbers.
+
+4.1.1. Non-compressed tar archive (*.tar)
+
+            $ tar xf hdf5-X.Y.Z.tar
+
+4.1.2. Compressed tar archive (*.tar.Z)
+
+            $ uncompress -c < hdf5-X.Y.Z.tar.Z | tar xf -
+            Or
+            $ tar Zxf hdf5-X.Y.Z.tar.Z
+
+4.1.3. Gzip'd tar archive (*.tar.gz)
+
+            $ gunzip < hdf5-X.Y.Z.tar.gz | tar xf -
+            Or
+            $ tar zxf hdf5-X.Y.Z.tar.gz
+
+4.1.4. Bzip'd tar archive (*.tar.bz2)
+
+            $ bunzip2 < hdf5-X.Y.Z.tar.bz2 | tar xf -
+            Or
+            $ tar jxf hdf5-X.Y.Z.tar.bz2
+
+4.2. Source versus build directories
+        On most systems the build can occur in a directory other than the
+        source directory, allowing multiple concurrent builds and/or
+        read-only source code. In order to accomplish this, one should
+        create a build directory, cd into that directory, and run the
+        `configure' script found in the source directory (configure
+        details are below). For example,
+            $ mkdir built-fortran
+            $ cd build-fortran
+            $ ../hdf5-X.Y.Z/configure --enable-fortran ...
+
+        Unfortunately, this does not work on recent Irix platforms (6.5?
+        and later) because that `make' does not understand the VPATH variable. 
+        However, HDF5 also supports Irix `pmake' which has a .PATH target 
+        which serves a similar purpose. Here's what the Irix man pages say 
+        about VPATH, the facility used by HDF5 makefiles for this feature:
+
+                The VPATH facility is a derivation of the undocumented
+                VPATH feature in the System V Release 3 version of make.
+                System V Release 4 has a new VPATH implementation, much
+                like the pmake(1) .PATH feature. This new feature is also
+                undocumented in the standard System V Release 4 manual
+                pages.  For this reason it is not available in the IRIX
+                version of make. The VPATH facility should not be used
+                with the new parallel make option.
+
+4.3. Configuring
+        HDF5 uses the GNU autoconf system for configuration, which
+        detects various features of the host system and creates the
+        Makefiles. On most systems it should be sufficient to say:
+
+            $ ./configure        
+            Or
+            $ sh configure
+
+        The configuration process can be controlled through environment
+        variables, command-line switches, and host configuration files.
+        For a complete list of switches type:
+
+            $ ./configure --help
+
+        The host configuration files are located in the `config'
+        directory and are based on architecture name, vendor name, and/or
+        operating system which are displayed near the beginning of the
+        `configure' output. The host config file influences the behavior
+        of configure by setting or augmenting shell variables.
+
+4.3.1. Specifying the installation directories
+        The default installation location is the HDF5 directory created in
+        the build directory. Typing `make install' will install the HDF5
+        Library, header files, examples, and support programs in hdf5/lib,
+        hdf5/include, hdf5/doc/hdf5/examples, and hdf5/bin. To use a path
+        other than hdf5, specify the path with the `--prefix=PATH' switch:
+
+            $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
+
+        If shared libraries are being built (the default), the final
+        home of the shared library must be specified with this switch
+        before the library and executables are built.
+
+        HDF5 can be installed into a different location than the prefix
+        specified at configure time; see section 4.6, "Installing HDF5," 
+        for more details.
+
+4.3.2. Using an alternate C compiler
+        By default, configure will look for the C compiler by trying
+        `gcc' and `cc'. However, if the environment variable "CC" is set
+        then its value is used as the C compiler.  For instance, one would 
+        use the following line to specify the native C compiler on a system 
+        that also has the GNU gcc compiler (users of csh and derivatives 
+        will need to prefix the commands below with `env'):
+
+            $ CC=cc ./configure
+
+        A parallel version of HDF5 can be built by specifying `mpicc'
+        as the C compiler.  (The `--enable-parallel' flag documented
+        below is optional in this case.)  Using the `mpicc' compiler
+        will insure that the correct MPI and MPI-IO header files and
+        libraries are used.
+
+            $ CC=/usr/local/mpi/bin/mpicc ./configure
+
+4.3.3. Configuring for 64-bit support
+        Several machine architectures support 32-bit or 64-bit binaries.
+        The options below describe how to enable support for different options.
+
+        On Irix64, the default compiler is `cc'. To use an alternate compiler,
+        specify it with the CC variable:
+
+            $ CC='cc -n32' ./configure
+
+        Similarly, users compiling on a Solaris machine and desiring to
+        build the distribution with 64-bit support should specify the
+        correct flags with the CC variable:
+
+            $ CC='cc -xarch=v9' ./configure
+
+        To configure AIX 64-bit support including the Fortran and C++ APIs,
+        (Note: need to set $AR to 'ar -X 64'.)
+        Serial:
+            $ CFLAGS=-q64 FFLAGS=-q64 CXXFLAGS=-q64 AR='ar -X 64'\
+              ./configure --enable-fortran
+        Parallel: (C++ not supported with parallel)
+            $ CFLAGS=-q64 FFLAGS=-q64 AR='ar -X 64'\
+              ./configure --enable-fortran
+
+4.3.4. Additional compilation flags
+        If addtional flags must be passed to the compilation commands,
+        specify those flags with the CFLAGS variable. For instance,
+        to enable symbolic debugging of a production version of HDF5, one
+        might say:
+
+            $ CFLAGS=-g ./configure --enable-production
+
+4.3.5. Compiling HDF5 wrapper libraries
+        One can optionally build the Fortran and/or C++ interfaces to the
+        HDF5 C library. By default, both options are disabled. To build
+        them, specify `--enable-fortran' and `--enable-cxx', respectively.
+
+            $ ./configure --enable-fortran
+            $ ./configure --enable-cxx
+        
+        Configuration will halt if a working Fortran 90 or 95 compiler or
+        C++ compiler is not found. Currently, the Fortran configure tests
+        for these compilers in order: f90, pgf90, f95. To use an
+        alternate compiler specify it with the FC variable:
+
+            $ FC=/usr/local/bin/g95 ./configure --enable-fortran
+
+        Note: The Fortran and C++ interfaces are not supported on all the
+              platforms the main HDF5 Library supports. Also, the Fortran
+              interface supports parallel HDF5 while the C++ interface does
+              not.
+
+        Note: See sections 4.7 and 4.8 for building the Fortran library with
+              Intel or PGI compilers. 
+
+4.3.6. Specifying other programs
+        The build system has been tuned for use with GNU make but also 
+        works with other versions of make.  If the `make' command runs a
+        non-GNU version but a GNU version is available under a different
+        name (perhaps `gmake'), then HDF5 can be configured to use it by
+        setting the MAKE variable. Note that whatever value is used for
+        MAKE must also be used as the make command when building the
+        library:
+
+            $ MAKE=gmake ./configure
+            $ gmake
+
+        The `AR' and `RANLIB' variables can also be set to the names of
+        the `ar' and `ranlib' (or `:') commands to override values
+        detected by configure.
+
+        The HDF5 Library, include files, and utilities are installed
+        during `make install' (described below) with a BSD-compatible
+        install program detected automatically by configure. If none is
+        found, the shell script bin/install-sh is used. Configure does not
+        check that the install script actually works; if a bad install is 
+        detected on your system (e.g., on the ASCI blue machine as of 
+        March 2, 1999) you have two choices:
+
+            1. Copy the bin/install-sh program to your $HOME/bin
+               directory, name it `install', and make sure that $HOME/bin
+               is searched before the system bin directories.
+
+            2. Specify the full path name of the `install-sh' program
+               as the value of the INSTALL environment variable. Note: do
+               not use `cp' or some other program in place of install
+               because the HDF5 makefiles also use the install program to
+               change file ownership and/or access permissions.
+
+4.3.7. Specifying other libraries and headers
+        Configure searches the standard places (those places known by the
+        systems compiler) for include files and header files. However,
+        additional directories can be specified by using the CPPFLAGS
+        and/or LDFLAGS variables:
+
+            $ CPPFLAGS=-I/home/robb/include \
               LDFLAGS=-L/home/robb/lib \
-	      ./configure
-
-	HDF5 uses the zlib library for two purposes: it provides support
-	for the HDF5 deflate data compression filter, and it is used by
-	the h5toh4 converter and  the h4toh5 converter in support of
-	HDF4. Configure searches the standard places (plus those
-	specified above with CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS variables) for the zlib
-	headers and library. The search can be disabled by specifying
-	`--without-zlib' or alternate directories can be specified with
-	`--with-zlib=INCDIR,LIBDIR' or through the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS
-	variables:
-
-	    $ ./configure --with-zlib=/usr/unsup/include,/usr/unsup/lib
-
-	    $ CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/unsup/include \
-	      LDFLAGS=-L/usr/unsup/lib \
-	      ./configure
-
-	The HDF5-to-HDF4 and HDF4-to-HDF5 conversion tool requires the
-	HDF4 library and header files which are detected the same way as
-	zlib. The switch to give to configure is `--with-hdf4'.  Note
-	that HDF5 requires a newer version of zlib than the one shipped
-	with some versions of HDF4. Also, unless you have the "correct"
-	version of hdf4 the confidence testing will fail in the tools
-	directory.
-
-	HDF5 has Szip predefined compression method (see 4.2).  To enable
-	Szip compression, HDF5 library has to be configured and build using 
-	Szip Library
-
-        $ ./configure --with-szlib=/Szip_Install_Directory
-
-5.3.8. Static versus shared linking
-	The build process will create static libraries on all systems and
-	shared libraries on systems that support dynamic linking to a
-	sufficient degree. Either form of library may be suppressed by
-	saying `--disable-static' or `--disable-shared'.
-
-	    $ ./configure --disable-shared
-
-	Shared C++ and Fortran libraries will be built if shared libraries
-	are enabled.
-
-	To build only statically linked executables on platforms which
-	support shared libraries, use the `--enable-static-exec' flag.
-
-	    $ ./configure --enable-static-exec
-
-5.3.9. Optimization versus symbolic debugging
-	The library can be compiled to provide symbolic debugging support
-	so it can be debugged with gdb, dbx, ddd, etc or it can be
-	compiled with various optimizations. To compile for symbolic
-	debugging (the default for snapshots) say `--disable-production';
-	to compile with optimizations (the default for supported public
-	releases) say `--enable-production'. On some systems the library
-	can also be compiled for profiling with gprof by saying
-	`--enable-production=profile'.
-
-	    $ ./configure --disable-production         #symbolic debugging
-	    $ ./configure --enable-production          #optimized code
-	    $ ./configure --enable-production=profile  #for use with gprof
-
-	Regardless of whether support for symbolic debugging is enabled,
-	the library also is able to perform runtime debugging of certain
-	packages (such as type conversion execution times, and extensive
-	invariant condition checking). To enable this debugging supply a
-	comma-separated list of package names to to the `--enable-debug'
-	switch (see Debugging.html for a list of package names).
-	Debugging can be disabled by saying `--disable-debug'. The
-	default debugging level for snapshots is a subset of the
-	available packages; the default for supported releases is no
-	debugging (debugging can incur a significant runtime penalty).
-
-	    $ ./configure --enable-debug=s,t  #debug only H5S and H5T
-	    $ ./configure --enable-debug      #debug normal packages
-	    $ ./configure --enable-debug=all  #debug all packages
-	    $ ./configure --disable-debug     #no debugging
-
-	HDF5 is also able to print a trace of all API function calls,
-	their arguments, and the return values. To enable or disable the
-	ability to trace the API say `--enable-trace' (the default for
-	snapthots) or `--disable-trace' (the default for public
-	releases). The tracing must also be enabled at runtime to see any
-	output (see Debugging.html).
-
-5.3.10. Large (>2GB) vs. small (<2GB) file capability
-	In order to read or write files that could potentially be larger
-	than 2GB it is necessary to use the non-ANSI `long long' data
-	type on some platforms. However, some compilers (e.g., GNU gcc
-	versions before 2.8.1 on Intel platforms) are unable to produce
-	correct machine code for this data type. To disable use of the
-	`long long' type on these machines say:
-
-	    $ ./configure --disable-hsizet
-
-5.3.11. Parallel vs. serial library
-	The HDF5 library can be configured to use MPI and MPI-IO for
-	parallelizm on a distributed multi-processor system.  Read the
-	file INSTALL_parallel for detailed explanations.
-
-5.3.12. Threadsafe capability
-	The HDF5 library can be configured to be thread-safe (on a very
-	large scale) with the with the `--enable-threadsafe' flag to
-	the configure script.  Some platforms may also require the 
-	'-with-pthread=INC,LIB' (or '--with-pthread=DIR') flag to the configure
-	script as well.  Read the file doc/TechNotes/ThreadSafeLibrary.html
-	for further details.
-
-5.3.13. Backward compatibility
-	The 1.8 version of the HDF5 library can be configured to operate
-	identically to the v1.6 library with the `--enable-hdf5v1_6'
-	configure flag. This allows existing code to be compiled with the
-	v1.8 library without requiring immediate changes to the
-	application source code. This flag will only be supported in the
-	v1.8 branch of the library, it will not be available in v1.9+.
-
-5.3.14. Network stream capability
-	The HDF5 library can be configured with a network stream file
-	driver with the `--enable-stream-vfd' configure flag. This option
-	compiles the "stream" Virtual File Driver into the main library.
-	See the documentation on the Virtual File Layer for more details
-	about the use of this driver.  The network stream capability is
-	enabled by default, except for use in parallel or with a parallel
-        compiler, where it is disabled. Explicitly enabling Stream-VFD
-        will allow for its use in parallel.
-
-5.4. Building
-	The library, confidence tests, and programs can be build by
-	saying just:
-
-	    $ make
-
-	Note that if you supplied some other make command via the MAKE
-	variable during the configuration step then that same command
-	must be used here.
-
-	When using GNU make you can add `-j -l6' to the make command to
-	compile in parallel on SMP machines. Do not give a number after
-	th `-j' since GNU make will turn it off for recursive invocations
-	of make.
-
-	    $ make -j -l6
-
-5.5. Testing
-	HDF5 comes with various test suites, all of which can be run by
-	saying
-
-	    $ make check
-
-	To run only the tests for the library change to the `test'
-	directory before issuing the command. Similarly, tests for the
-	parallel aspects of the library are in `testpar' and tests for
-	the support programs are in `tools'.
-
-	Temporary files will be deleted by each test when it complets,
-	but may continue to exist in an incomplete state if the test
-	fails. To prevent deletion of the files define the HDF5_NOCLEANUP
-	environment variable.
-
-        The HDF5 tests can take a long time to run on some systems.  To
-        perform a faster (but less thorough) test, set the HDF5TestExpress
-        environment variable to 2 or 3 (with 3 being the shortest run).
-        To perform a longer test, set HDF5TestExpress to 0.  1 is the default.
-
-5.6. Installing
-	The HDF5 library, include files, and support programs can be
-	installed in a (semi-)public place by saying `make install'. The
-	files are installed under the directory specified with
-	`--prefix=DIR' (or '/usr/local') in directories named `lib',
-	`include', and `bin'. The prefix directory must exist prior to
-	`make install', but its subdirectories are created automatically.
-
-	If `make install' fails because the install command at your site
-	somehow fails, you may use the install-sh that comes with the
-	source. You need to run ./configure again.
+              ./configure
+
+        HDF5 uses the zlib library for two purposes: it provides support
+        for the HDF5 deflate data compression filter, and it is used by
+        the h5toh4 converter and  the h4toh5 converter in support of
+        HDF4. Configure searches the standard places (plus those specified 
+        above with the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS variables) for the zlib
+        headers and library. The search can be disabled by specifying
+        `--without-zlib' or alternate directories can be specified with
+        `--with-zlib=INCDIR,LIBDIR' or through the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS
+        variables:
+
+            $ ./configure --with-zlib=/usr/unsup/include,/usr/unsup/lib
+
+            $ CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/unsup/include \
+              LDFLAGS=-L/usr/unsup/lib \
+              ./configure
+
+        The HDF5-to-HDF4 and HDF4-to-HDF5 conversion tool requires the
+        HDF4 library and header files, which are detected the same way as
+        zlib. The switch to give to configure is `--with-hdf4'.  Note
+        that HDF5 requires a newer version of zlib than the one shipped
+        with some versions of HDF4. Also, unless you have the "correct"
+        version of HDF4, the confidence testing will fail in the tools
+        directory.
+
+        HDF5 includes Szip as a predefined compression method (see 3.2).  
+        To enable Szip compression, the HDF5 Library must be configured 
+        and built using the Szip Library:
+
+            $ ./configure --with-szlib=/Szip_Install_Directory
+
+4.3.8. Static versus shared linking
+        The build process will create static libraries on all systems and
+        shared libraries on systems that support dynamic linking to a
+        sufficient degree. Either form of the library may be suppressed by
+        saying `--disable-static' or `--disable-shared'.
+
+            $ ./configure --disable-shared
+
+        Shared C++ and Fortran libraries will be built if shared libraries
+        are enabled.
+
+        To build only statically linked executables on platforms which
+        support shared libraries, use the `--enable-static-exec' flag.
+
+            $ ./configure --enable-static-exec
+
+4.3.9. Optimization versus symbolic debugging
+        The library can be compiled to provide symbolic debugging support
+        so it can be debugged with gdb, dbx, ddd, etc., or it can be
+        compiled with various optimizations. To compile for symbolic
+        debugging (the default for snapshots), say `--disable-production';
+        to compile with optimizations (the default for supported public
+        releases), say `--enable-production'. On some systems the library
+        can also be compiled for profiling with gprof by saying
+        `--enable-production=profile'.
+
+            $ ./configure --disable-production         #symbolic debugging
+            $ ./configure --enable-production          #optimized code
+            $ ./configure --enable-production=profile  #for use with gprof
+
+        Regardless of whether support for symbolic debugging is enabled,
+        the library can also perform runtime debugging of certain packages 
+        (such as type conversion execution times and extensive invariant 
+        condition checking). To enable this debugging, supply a
+        comma-separated list of package names to to the `--enable-debug'
+        switch.  See "Debugging HDF5 Applications" for a list of package 
+        names:
+
+            http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/H5.user/Debugging.html
+
+        Debugging can be disabled by saying `--disable-debug'. 
+        The default debugging level for snapshots is a subset of the
+        available packages; the default for supported releases is no
+        debugging (debugging can incur a significant runtime penalty).
+
+            $ ./configure --enable-debug=s,t  #debug only H5S and H5T
+            $ ./configure --enable-debug      #debug normal packages
+            $ ./configure --enable-debug=all  #debug all packages
+            $ ./configure --disable-debug     #no debugging
+
+        HDF5 can also print a trace of all API function calls, their 
+        arguments, and the return values. To enable or disable the
+        ability to trace the API say `--enable-trace' (the default for
+        snapthots) or `--disable-trace' (the default for public releases). 
+        The tracing must also be enabled at runtime to see any output 
+        (see "Debugging HDF5 Applications," reference above).
+
+4.3.10. Parallel versus serial library
+        The HDF5 Library can be configured to use MPI and MPI-IO for
+        parallelism on a distributed multi-processor system.  Read the
+        file INSTALL_parallel for detailed explanations.
+
+4.3.11. Threadsafe capability
+        The HDF5 Library can be configured to be thread-safe (on a very
+        large scale) with the `--enable-threadsafe' flag to the configure
+        script.  Some platforms may also require the '-with-pthread=INC,LIB'
+        (or '--with-pthread=DIR') flag to the configure script.
+        For further details, see "HDF5 Thread Safe Library":
+
+            http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/TechNotes/ThreadSafeLibrary.html
+
+4.3.12. Backward compatibility
+        The 1.8 version of the HDF5 Library can be configured to operate
+        identically to the v1.6 library with the 
+            --with-default-api-version=v16
+        configure flag. This allows existing code to be compiled with the
+        v1.8 library without requiring immediate changes to the application 
+        source code.  For addtional configuration options and other details, 
+        see "API Compatibility Macros in HDF5":
+
+            http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/RM/APICompatMacros.html 
+
+4.4. Building
+        The library, confidence tests, and programs can be built by
+        saying just:
+
+            $ make
+
+        Note that if you have supplied some other make command via the MAKE
+        variable during the configuration step, that same command must be
+        used here.
+
+        When using GNU make, you can add `-j -l6' to the make command to
+        compile in parallel on SMP machines. Do not give a number after
+        the `-j' since GNU make will turn it off for recursive invocations
+        of make.
+
+            $ make -j -l6
+
+4.5. Testing
+        HDF5 comes with various test suites, all of which can be run by
+        saying
+
+            $ make check
+
+        To run only the tests for the library, change to the `test'
+        directory before issuing the command. Similarly, tests for the
+        parallel aspects of the library are in `testpar' and tests for
+        the support programs are in `tools'.
+
+        The `check' consists of two sub-tests, check-s and check-p, which
+        are for serial and parallel tests, respectively.  Since serial tests
+        and parallel tests must be run with single and multiple processes
+        respectively, the two sub-tests work nicely for batch systems in
+        which the number of processes is fixed per batch job.  One may submit
+        one batch job, requesting 1 process, to run all the serial tests by
+        "make check-s"; and submit another batch job, requesting multiple
+        processes, to run all the parallel tests by "make check-p".
+
+        Temporary files will be deleted by each test when it completes,
+        but may continue to exist in an incomplete state if the test
+        fails. To prevent deletion of the files, define the HDF5_NOCLEANUP
+        environment variable.
+
+        The HDF5 tests can take a long time to run on some systems.  To perform
+        a faster (but less thorough) test, set the HDF5TestExpress environment
+        variable to 2 or 3 (with 3 being the shortest run).  To perform a
+        longer test, set HDF5TestExpress to 0.  1 is the default.
+
+4.6. Installing HDF5
+        The HDF5 Library, include files, and support programs can be
+        installed in a (semi-)public place by saying `make install'. The
+        files are installed under the directory specified with
+        `--prefix=DIR' (default is 'hdf5') in directories named `lib',
+        `include', and `bin'. The directories, if not existing, will be
+        created automatically, provided the mkdir command supports the -p
+        option.
+
+        If `make install' fails because the install command at your site
+        somehow fails, you may use the install-sh that comes with the
+        source. You will need to run ./configure again.
 
             $ INSTALL="$PWD/bin/install-sh -c" ./configure ...
             $ make install
 
-	If you want to install HDF5 in a location other than the location
-	specified by the `--prefix=DIR' flag during configuration (or
-	instead of the default location, `/usr/local'), you can do that
-	by running the deploy script:
+        If you want to install HDF5 in a location other than the location
+        specified by the `--prefix=DIR' flag during configuration (or
+        instead of the default location, `hdf5'), you can do that
+        by running the deploy script:
 
             $ bin/deploy NEW_DIR
 
-	This will install hdf5 in NEW_DIR.  Alternately, you can do this
-	manually by issuing the command:
+        This will install HDF5 in NEW_DIR.  Alternately, you can do this
+        manually by issuing the command:
 
-	    $ make install prefix=NEW_DIR
+            $ make install prefix=NEW_DIR
 
-	where NEW_DIR is the new directory you wish to install HDF5. If
-	you do not use the deploy script, you should run h5redeploy in
-	NEW_DIR/bin directory.  This utility will fix h5cc, h5fc and
-	h5c++ scripts to reflect the new NEW_DIR location.
+        where NEW_DIR is the new directory where you wish to install HDF5. 
+        If you do not use the deploy script, you should run h5redeploy in
+        NEW_DIR/bin directory.  This utility will fix the h5cc, h5fc and
+        h5c++ scripts to reflect the new NEW_DIR location.
 
-	The library can be used without installing it by pointing the
-	compiler at the `src' and 'src/.libs' directory for include files and
-	libraries. However, the minimum which must be installed to make
-	the library publically available is:
+        The library can be used without installing it by pointing the
+        compiler at the `src' and 'src/.libs' directory for include files and
+        libraries. However, the minimum which must be installed to make
+        the library publicly available is:
 
-	    The library:
-		./src/.libs/libhdf5.a
+            The library:
+                ./src/.libs/libhdf5.a
 
-	    The public header files:
-		./src/H5*public.h, ./src/H5public.h
+            The public header files:
+                ./src/H5*public.h, ./src/H5public.h
                 ./src/H5FD*.h except ./src/H5FDprivate.h,
                 ./src/H5api_adpt.h
 
-	    The main header file:
-		./src/hdf5.h
+            The main header file:
+                ./src/hdf5.h
+
+            The configuration information:
+                ./src/H5pubconf.h
+        
+            The support programs that are useful are:
+            ./tools/h5ls/h5ls               (list file contents)
+            ./tools/h5dump/h5dump           (dump file contents)
+            ./tools/misc/h5repart           (repartition file families)
+            ./tools/misc/h5debug            (low-level file debugging)
+            ./tools/h5import/h5import       (imports data to HDF5 file)
+            ./tools/h5diff/h5diff           (compares two HDF5 files)
+            ./tools/gifconv/h52gif          (HDF5 to GIF converter) 
+            ./tools/gifconv/gif2h5          (GIF to HDF5 converter)
 
-	    The configuration information:
-		./src/H5pubconf.h
-	
-    	The support programs that are useful are:
-	    ./tools/h5ls/h5ls		(list file contents)
-	    ./tools/h5dump/h5dump	(dump file contents)
-	    ./tools/misc/h5repart	(repartition file families)
-	    ./tools/misc/h5debug	(low-level file debugging)
-	    ./tools/h5import/h5import	(imports data to HDF5 file)
-            ./tools/h5diff/h5diff       (compares two HDF5 files)
-            ./tools/gifconv/h52gif	(HDF5 to GIF converter) 
-            ./tools/gifconv/gif2h5      (GIF to HDF5 converter)
 
-5.7  Building and testing with Intel compilers
+5. Using the Library
+        Please see the "HDF5 User's Guide" and the "HDF5 Reference Manual":
 
+            http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/
 
-     When Intel compilers are used (icc or ecc), you will need to 
-     modify the generated "libtool" program after configuration is finished.
-     On or around line 104 of the libtool file, there are lines which 
-     look like:
+        Most programs will include <hdf5.h> and link with -lhdf5.
+        Additional libraries may also be necessary depending on whether
+        support for compression, etc., was compiled into the HDF5 Library.
 
-          # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
-          wl=""
+        A summary of the HDF5 installation can be found in the
+        libhdf5.settings file in the same directory as the static and/or
+        shared HDF5 Libraries.
 
-      Change these lines to this:
 
-          # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
-          wl="-Wl,"
+6. Support
+        Support is described in the README file.
 
-      UPDATE: This is now done automatically by the configure script. However,
-      if you still experience a problem, you may want to check this line in
-      the libtool file and make sure that it has the correct value.
 
-    * To build the Fortran library using Intel compiler on Linux 2.4, one has to 
-          x Use -fpp -DDEC$=DEC_ -DMS$=MS_ compiler flags to disable
-            DEC and MS compiler directives in source files in fortran/src, fortran/test 
-            and fortran/examples directories.
-	    e.g., setenv F9X 'ifc -fpp -DDEC$=DEC_ -DMS$=MS_'
-	    (do not use double quotes since $ is interpreted in them.)
+*****************************************************************************
+			    APPENDIX
+*****************************************************************************
 
-          x If Version 6.0 of Fortran compiler is used, build fails in 
-            the fortran/test directory and then in the
-            fortran/examples directory; to proceed, edit the work.pcl files in
-            those directories to contain two lines
+A. Warnings about compilers
+        Output from the following compilers should be extremely suspected
+        when used to compile the HDF5 Library, especially if optimizations are
+        enabled. In all cases, HDF5 attempts to work around the compiler bugs.
+
+A.1. GNU (Intel platforms)
+        Versions before 2.8.1 have serious problems allocating registers
+        when functions contain operations on `long long' datatypes.
+        Supplying the `--disable-hsizet' switch to configure (documented
+        in Appendix B, "Large (>2GB) versus small (<2GB) file capability,")
+        will prevent HDF5 from using `long long' datatypes in
+        situations that are known not to work, but it limits the HDF5
+        address space to 2GB.
+
+A.2. COMPAQ/DEC
+        The V5.2-038 compiler (and possibly others) occasionally
+        generates incorrect code for memcpy() calls when optimizations
+        are enabled, resulting in unaligned access faults. HDF5 works
+        around the problem by casting the second argument to `char *'.
+        The Fortran module (5.4.1a) fails in compiling some Fortran
+        programs.  Use 5.5.0 or higher.
+
+A.3. SGI (Irix64 6.2)
+        The Mongoose 7.00 compiler has serious optimization bugs and
+        should be upgraded to MIPSpro 7.2.1.2m. Patches are available
+        from SGI.
+
+A.4. Windows/NT
+        The Microsoft Win32 5.0 compiler is unable to cast unsigned long
+        long values to doubles. HDF5 works around this bug by first
+        casting to signed long long and then to double.
+
+        A link warning: defaultlib "LIBC" conflicts with use of other libs
+        appears for debug version of VC++ 6.0. This warning will not affect
+        building and testing HDF5 Libraries. 
+
+
+B. Large (>2GB) versus small (<2GB) file capability
+        In order to read or write files that could potentially be larger
+        than 2GB, it is necessary to use the non-ANSI `long long' data
+        type on some platforms. However, some compilers (e.g., GNU gcc
+        versions before 2.8.1 on Intel platforms) are unable to produce
+        correct machine code for this datatype. To disable use of the
+        `long long' type on these machines, say:
+
+            $ ./configure --disable-hsizet
+
+C. Building and testing with other compilers
+C.1.  Building and testing with Intel compilers
+        When Intel compilers are used (icc or ecc), you will need to modify
+        the generated "libtool" program after configuration is finished.
+        On or around line 104 of the libtool file, there are lines which 
+        look like:
+
+            # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
+            wl=""
+
+        Change these lines to this:
+
+            # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
+            wl="-Wl,"
+
+        UPDATE: This is now done automatically by the configure script. 
+        However, if you still experience a problem, you may want to check this 
+        line in the libtool file and make sure that it has the correct value.
+
+      * To build the Fortran library using Intel compiler on Linux 2.4, 
+        one has to perform the following steps:
+          x Use the -fpp -DDEC$=DEC_ -DMS$=MS_ compiler flags to disable
+            DEC and MS compiler directives in source files in the fortran/src, 
+            fortran/test, and fortran/examples directories.
+            E.g.,  setenv F9X 'ifc -fpp -DDEC$=DEC_ -DMS$=MS_'
+            Do not use double quotes since $ is interpreted in them.
+
+          x If Version 6.0 of Fortran compiler is used, the build fails in 
+            the fortran/test directory and then in the fortran/examples 
+            directory.  To proceed, edit the work.pcl files in those 
+            directories to contain two lines:
 
                     work.pc
                     ../src/work.pc 
 
-          x Do the same in fortran/examples directory
-          x Problem with work.pc files was resolved for newest version of the compiler (7.0)
-
-    * To build the Fortran Library on IA32 follow step described above, except 
-      that DEC and MS compiler directives should be removed manually or 
-      use a patch from HDF FTP server ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF/HDF5/current/
-
-
-5.8  Building and testing with PGI compilers
-     
-     When PGI C and C++ compilers are used (pgcc or pgCC), you will need to 
-     modify the generated "libtool" program after configuration is finished.
-     On or around line 104 of the libtool file, there are lines which 
-     look like:
+          x Do the same in the fortran/examples directory.
 
-          # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
-          wl=""
+          x A problem with work.pc files was resolved for the newest version 
+            of the compiler (7.0).
 
-      Change these lines to this:
+       * To build the Fortran library on IA32, follow the steps described 
+         above, except that the DEC and MS compiler directives should be 
+         removed manually or use a patch from HDF FTP server:
 
-          # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
-          wl="-Wl,"
+             ftp://ftp.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/current/
 
-      UPDATE: This is now done automatically by the configure script. However,
-      if you still experience a problem, you may want to check this line in
-      the libtool file and make sure that it has the correct value.
 
-      To build HDF5 C++ Library with pgCC (version 4.0 and later), set
-      environment variable CXX to "pgCC -tlocal"
-         setenv CXX "pgCC -tlocal"
-      before running the configure script.
+C.2.  Building and testing with PGI compilers
+        When PGI C and C++ compilers are used (pgcc or pgCC), you will need to 
+        modify the generated "libtool" program after configuration is finished.
+        On or around line 104 of the libtool file, there are lines which 
+        look like this:
 
+            # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
+            wl=""
 
-6. Using the Library
-	Please see the User Manual in the doc/html directory.
+        Change these lines to this:
 
-	Most programs will include <hdf5.h> and link with -lhdf5.
-	Additional libraries may also be necessary depending on whether
-	support for compression, etc. was compiled into the hdf5 library.
+            # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
+            wl="-Wl,"
 
-	A summary of the hdf5 installation can be found in the
-	libhdf5.settings file in the same directory as the static and/or
-	shared hdf5 libraries.
+        UPDATE: This is now done automatically by the configure script. However,
+        if you still experience a problem, you may want to check this line in
+        the libtool file and make sure that it has the correct value.
 
+        To build the HDF5 C++ Library with pgCC (version 4.0 and later), set
+        the environment variable CXX to "pgCC -tlocal"
+            setenv CXX "pgCC -tlocal"
+        before running the configure script.
 
-7. Support
-	Support is described in the README file.
diff --git a/release_docs/INSTALL_Cygwin.txt b/release_docs/INSTALL_Cygwin.txt
index 0cb0968..b63d294 100644
--- a/release_docs/INSTALL_Cygwin.txt
+++ b/release_docs/INSTALL_Cygwin.txt
@@ -98,29 +98,7 @@ Install HDF5 on Cygwin
 
             $ bunzip2 < hdf5-1.8.0.tar.bz2 | tar xf - 
             
-3. Setup environment
-
-   In the latest version of the Cygwin DLL, a bug was introduced
-   relating to the 'timezone' global variable and C99 support. As
-   work-around, we must use a special compiler flag.
-
-      3.1. In the command prompt you plan to build from, run the 
-           command:
-
-               export CFLAGS="-ansi ${CFLAGS}"
-
-      3.2 (Optional) If you plan to build C++ libraries, also
-          run the command:
-
-               export CXXFLAGS="-ansi ${CXXFLAGS}"
-
-      3.3 (Optional) If you plan to build Fortran libraries, also
-          run the command:
-
-               export FCFLAGS="-ansi ${FCFLAGS}"
-
-
-4. Configuring 
+3. Configuring 
      
    Notes: See detailed information in hdf5/release_docs/INSTALL, 
           part 5. Full installation instructions for source 
@@ -134,19 +112,19 @@ Install HDF5 on Cygwin
      
    In short,
      
-   4.1 To configure HDF5 C Library, using 
+   3.1 To configure HDF5 C Library, using 
             
             $ ./configure
                    
-   4.2 To configure HDF5 C/C++ Library, using
+   3.2 To configure HDF5 C/C++ Library, using
 
             $ ./configure --enable-cxx
                    
-   4.3 To configure HDF5 C/Fortran Library, using
+   3.3 To configure HDF5 C/Fortran Library, using
 
             $ ./configure --enable-fortran
                    
-   4.4 To configure HDF5 C with Szip library, using
+   3.4 To configure HDF5 C with Szip library, using
 
             $ ./configure  --with-szlib="path to szlib"
            
@@ -157,15 +135,15 @@ Install HDF5 on Cygwin
            
             $ ./configure --with-szlib=/cygdrive/c/szip
                    
-   4.5 To configure HDF5 C without Zlib,
+   3.5 To configure HDF5 C without Zlib,
      
        To disable zlib, using
 
            $ ./configure --without-zlib
            
-   4.6 Two ways to configure HDF5 C with specified Zlib
+   3.6 Two ways to configure HDF5 C with specified Zlib
      
-     4.6.1 Using
+     3.6.1 Using
 
            $ ./configure --with-zlib=INCDIR,LIBDIR
 
@@ -175,7 +153,7 @@ Install HDF5 on Cygwin
 
  $ ./configure --with-zlib=/cygdrive/c/usr/include,/cygdrive/c/usr/lib
 
-     4.6.2 Through the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS Variables
+     3.6.2 Through the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS Variables
            
        For example, if zlib was installed in the directory 
        /cygdrive/c/usr then using the following command to configure 
@@ -185,7 +163,7 @@ Install HDF5 on Cygwin
            $ LDFLAGS=-L/cygdrive/c/usr/lib \
            $ ./configure
 
-   4.7 To specify the installation directories, using 
+   3.7 To specify the installation directories, using 
 
             $ ./configure --prefix="path for installation"
                  
@@ -196,7 +174,7 @@ Install HDF5 on Cygwin
        the path with the `--prefix=PATH' switch as in the above
        command.
 
-   4.8 Combination of Switches 
+   3.8 Combination of Switches 
 
        All of the above switches can be combined together. For 
        example, if users want to configure HDF5 C/C++/Fortran 
@@ -231,7 +209,7 @@ Install HDF5 on Cygwin
              --enable-fortran 
              <"If no more switches, then hit Enter">
                           
-5. Make and Make Check
+4. Make and Make Check
 
    After configuration is done successfully, run the following series of
    commands to build, test and install HDF5
@@ -242,23 +220,20 @@ Install HDF5 on Cygwin
    Before run "make install", check output file for "make check", there
    should be no failures at all.
 
-6. Make Install
+5. Make Install
 
             $ make install  > "output file name"
    
      
-7. Check installed HDF5 library
+6. Check installed HDF5 library
 
    After step 4, go to your installation directory, there should be 
    three subdirectories: "bin" "include" and "lib".
 
-8. Known Problems 
+7. Known Problems 
    
    Shared libraries can not be built on Cygwin In release 1.8.0.
 
-   There are issues linking with the latest Cygwin DLL.  As a work-around,
-   make sure to follow the steps described in step 3 above.
-
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 Need Further assistance, email help@hdfgroup.org
diff --git a/release_docs/INSTALL_VMS.txt b/release_docs/INSTALL_VMS.txt
index fd997c5..0245024 100644
--- a/release_docs/INSTALL_VMS.txt
+++ b/release_docs/INSTALL_VMS.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 		Building and installation instructions for Alpha Open VMS
                                   HDF5 1.8.0 release
-                                     January 2008
+                                     February 12, 2008
    
 
 
diff --git a/release_docs/INSTALL_Windows.txt b/release_docs/INSTALL_Windows.txt
index daedadd..1facd81 100644
--- a/release_docs/INSTALL_Windows.txt
+++ b/release_docs/INSTALL_Windows.txt
@@ -829,20 +829,14 @@ To build and test HDF5 High Level C examples:
           Select "Build" -> "Build Solution" or "Rebuild Solution" to build 
           release version of project "allhlcexamples".
 
-      When the debug and release build is done, there should be the following 
-      subdirectories in c:\MyHDFstuff\hdf5\examples\
-
-          allhlcexamples
-          ex_images
-          ex_imagesdll
-          ex_lite
-          ex_litedll
-          ex_table
-          ex_tabledll
-          ex_ds
-          ex_dsdll
-          ex_packet
-          ex_packetdll
+      When the debug and release build is done, binaries will be built in the
+      following subdirectories of c:\MyHDFstuff\hdf5\examples\
+
+          ex_image[1-2](dll)
+          ex_lite1(dll)
+          ex_table[01-12](dll)
+          ex_ds1(dll)
+          ptExample[FL+VL](dll)
 
    3. Invoke a command prompt and run the batch file Install_hlcexamples.bat 
       which resides in the top level directory (c:\MyHDFstuff\hdf5).  This file 
diff --git a/release_docs/INSTALL_parallel b/release_docs/INSTALL_parallel
index b0e0a86..e8f8bad 100644
--- a/release_docs/INSTALL_parallel
+++ b/release_docs/INSTALL_parallel
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ The "--enable-parallel" is optional in this case.
 Make sure your environment variables are set correctly to compile and execute
 a single process mpi applications for the SP machine. Unfortunately, the
 setting varies from machine to machine.  E.g., the following works for the
-Blue machine of LLNL.
+IBM SP machine at LLNL.
 
     setenv MP_PROCS     1
     setenv MP_NODES     1
@@ -102,7 +102,7 @@ This allows for >2GB sized files on Linux systems and is only available with
 Linux kernels 2.4 and greater.
 
 
-2.4. Red Storm (Cray XT3) (for v1.8 only)
+2.4. Red Storm (Cray XT3) (for v1.8 and later)
 -------------------------
 The following steps are for building the Parallel HDF5 for the Red Storm
 compute nodes.  They would probably work for other Cray XT3 systems but have
@@ -180,15 +180,28 @@ environment variable at the time `make check' is run (or the value 3).
 
 4. Parallel test suite
 ----------------------
-The testpar/ directory contains tests for Parallel HDF5 and MPI-IO.  The t_mpi
-tests the basic functionalities of some MPI-IO features used by Parallel HDF5.
-It usually exits with non-zero code if a required MPI-IO feature does not
-succeed as expected.  One exception is the testing of accessing files larger
-than 2GB.  If the underlying filesystem or if the MPI-IO library fails to
-handle file sizes larger than 2GB, the test will print informational messages
-stating the failure but will not exit with non-zero code.  Failure to support
-file size greater than 2GB is not a fatal error for HDF5 because HDF5 can
-use other file-drivers such as families of files to bypass the file size limit.
+The testpar/ directory contains tests for Parallel HDF5 and MPI-IO.  Here are
+some notes about some of the tests.
+
+The t_mpi tests the basic functionalities of some MPI-IO features used by
+Parallel HDF5.  It usually exits with non-zero code if a required MPI-IO
+feature does not succeed as expected.  One exception is the testing of
+accessing files larger than 2GB.  If the underlying filesystem or if the
+MPI-IO library fails to handle file sizes larger than 2GB, the test will
+print informational messages stating the failure but will not exit with
+non-zero code.  Failure to support file size greater than 2GB is not a fatal
+error for HDF5 because HDF5 can use other file-drivers such as families of
+files to bypass the file size limit.
+
+The t_posix_compliant tests if the file system is POSIX compliant when POSIX
+and MPI IO APIs are used.  This is for information only and it always exits
+with 0 even when non-compliance errors have occurred.  This is to prevent
+the test from aborting the remaining parallel HDF5 tests unnecessarily.
+
+The t_cache does many small sized I/O requests and may not run well in a
+slow file system such as NFS disk. If it takes a long time to run it, try
+set the environment variable $HDF5_PARAPREFIX to a file system more suitable
+for MPI-IO requests before running t_cache.
 
 By default, the parallel tests use the current directory as the test directory.
 This can be changed by the environment variable $HDF5_PARAPREFIX.  For example,
diff --git a/release_docs/RELEASE.txt b/release_docs/RELEASE.txt
index f1f58b6..881865b 100644
--- a/release_docs/RELEASE.txt
+++ b/release_docs/RELEASE.txt
@@ -1,32 +1,20 @@
-HDF5 version 1.8.0 currently under development
+HDF5 version 1.9.5 currently under development
 ================================================================================
 
 
 INTRODUCTION
 
-This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.6.* and
-Hdf5 1.8.0 release candidate "HDF5-1.8.0-rc*", and contains information 
-on the platforms tested and known problems in HDF5-1.8.0-rc*. 
-For more details check the HISTORY.txt file in the HDF5 source.
-
-
-Links to HDF5 1.8.0-rc* source code, documentation, and additional materials
-can be found on THG's development server (www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu) at the
-following location:
-     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/release/beta/obtain518.html
-User documentation for the beta can be accessed directly at this location: 
-     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_1.8pre/doc/
-
-New features of the upcoming 1.8.0 release are described in
-the "What's New in 1.8.0?" document:
-     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_1.8pre/WhatsNew180.html
-
-New and modified APIs are described briefly in
-     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_1.8pre/WhatsNew180.html
-and will be listed in the "HDF5 Software Changes" document:
-     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_1.8pre/doc/ADGuide/Changes.html
+This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.9.0 and
+HDF5 1.9.x snapshot, and contains information on the platforms 
+tested and known problems in HDF5-1.9.x. 
+For more details check the HISTORY*.txt files in the HDF5 source.
 
 
+Links to HDF5 1.9.x source code can be found on THG's development 
+FTP server at the following location:
+     ftp://ftp.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/pub/outgoing/hdf5/snapshots
+User documentation for the snapshot can be accessed directly at this location: 
+     http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_dev_snapshot/H5_dev/
 
 For more information, see the HDF5 home page:
    
@@ -41,7 +29,7 @@ CONTENTS
 
 - New Features
 - Support for new platforms and languages
-- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.6.0
+- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.8.0
 - Platforms Tested
 - Known Problems
 
@@ -50,940 +38,71 @@ New Features
 ============
 
     Configuration:
-    --------------
-        - Removed stream-vfd from the HDF5 library. - AKC 2007/11/19.
-        - Updated versions of autotools. HDF5 now uses automake 1.10.0, 
-          autoconf 2.61, and libtool 1.5.22. MAM - 2007/7/25.
-        - Changed default fortran compiler to g95 when gcc is used. - AKC
-          2007/2/17.
-        - 'make check-vfd' can now be run from the top level directory. Not all
-          tests that 'make check' invokes work with certain Virtual File Drivers,
-          so those tests have been skipped. - MAM 2006/7/17  
-        - Added the variable HDF5TestExpress to control how long tests run.
-          Setting it to a value between 0 and 3 controls how thoroughly the
-          library is tested, with 0 being an "exhaustive run" and 3 being a
-          very quick "smoke test."  1 (a "full run") is the default.
-          -JML 2006/6/21
-        - If both shared and static libraries are installed, now both will be
-          tested during 'make install'. -MAM 2006/06/21
-        - Added support to explicity enable stream_vfd or shared libraries
-          when using parallel via the '--enable-stream_vfd' and
-          '--enable-shared' options, respectively. If not explicity defined, 
-          These settings default to enabled when parallel is not used, 
-          and disabled when parallel is used. -MAM 2006/06/17
-        - Remove the flexible parallel code and the --enable-fphdf5
-          configure option, it was never up to production standards
-          anyway.  -QAK 2006/4/20
-        - Added a macro hdf5_mpi_special_collective_io_works to filter out
-          some mpi-io packages that don't support collective IO for no IO
-          contributions in some processes. -KY 2006/2/16
-	- Added -shlib option to link against installed shared libraries to
-	  h5c++ and h5fc.  -JML 2005/11/1
-	- Added --enable-build-all option to configure, which only developers
-	  should need to use.  -JML 2005/10/24
-	- Configure uses the 'TR' variable to let the user override the path
-          to the 'tr' utility. -JML 2005/10/17
-	- Configure can recognize -lmpich as a form of MPI library. -AKC-
-	  2005/9/28.
-        - MD5 checksumming has been added to snapshot releases.  Release
-          tarballs will be accompanied by .md5 checksum files, which can
-          be verified using the md5sum utility.  -JML 2005/9/6
-        - Some configure flags are incompatible (e.g., the C++ APIs cannot
-          be built using the parallel version of HDF5).  configure will now
-          output errors when some common incompatible features are used
-          together.  -JML 2005/9/6
-        - A new API function, H5Tis_hard(), was added to the library.  It
-          checks if a conversion function is a compiler (hard) conversion.
-          SLU - 2005/9/6
-	- t_mpi will run the test_mpio_derived_dtype by default unless it is
-	  known not working (indicated by macro H5_MPI_COMPLEX_DERIVED_DATATYPE_WORKS
-	  not defined.)  -AKC- 2005/8/23.
-	- Test execution has changed in a number of ways:
-	  When make is invoked in parallel (using -j), sequential tests
-	  are now executed as parallel make targets.  This should make them
-	  finish more quickly on machines with multiple processors.
-	  Since test output is garbled when they are executed by parallel make,
-	  tests now dump their output to foo.log files and foo.logsh files
-	  (for test scripts).  These logs are printed to the screen only
-	  when a test fails or when all tests in the current directory have
-	  completed successfully.
-	  When tests pass, they will create a foo.chkexe file.
-	  This prevents the test from executing again until the test or
-	  main library changes.
-	  All files generated by tests (*.chkexe, *.log, and any *.h5 files
-	  created) can be removed by invoking 'make check-clean'.
-	  Sequential and parallel library tests can now be invoked separately.
-	  'make check-s' will execute only sequential tests, and 'make check-p'
-	  will execute only parallel tests.  'make check' will still execute
-	  all tests.
-	    -JML 2005/08/03
-        - On windows, all.zip is deprecated. users should
-             read INSTALL_Windows.txt to know the details.
-             Reasons to deprecate all.zip:
-		1. Avoid confliction for windows programmers
-                2. Decrease size of CVS tree by adding all.zip
-	        3. Avoid using winzip as the intermediate step
-             --KY 2005/04/22
-	- When HDF5 is created as a shared library, it now uses libtool's
-	  shared library versioning scheme. -JML 2005/04/18
-	- HDF5 now uses automake 1.9.5 to generate Makefiles.in.
-	  This has a number of effects on users:
-          The Fortran compiler should be set using the environment
-          variable $FC, not $F9X.  F9X still works, but is depreciated.
-	  The output of make may be different.  This should be only a
-          cosmetic effect.
-	  make depened (or make dep) is no longer recognized, since automake
-	  handles dependency tracking.
-	  Some new configure options exist.  --enable-dependency-tracking
-          and --disable-dependency-tracking are used to control automake's
-	  dependency tracking.  Dependencies are on by default *on most
-	  platforms and compilers*.  If --enable-dependency-tracking is
-	  used, they will be enabled on any platform.  However, this can
-	  slow down builds or even cause build errors in some cases.
-	  Likewise, --disable-dependency-tracking can speed up builds and
-	  avoid some build errors.
-	  Some make targets have alternate names.  make check-install and
-	  make installcheck do the same thing, for instance.
-	  pmake on IRIX can be invoked from the root directory, but the
-	  -V flag must be used to invoke it in any subdirectory or it
-	  will give an error about undefined variables.
-	  JML 2005/01 - 2005/03
-        - Hardware conversion between long double and integers is also added.
-          SLU 2005/02/10
-        - Started to support software conversion between long double and 
-          integers.  Hardware conversion will come very soon.  SLU - 2005/1/6
-	- Intel v8.0 compiler would infinite loop when compiling some test
-	  code with -O3 option.  Changed enable-production default compiler
-	  option to -O2. AKC - 2004/12/06
-	- Long double is assumed to be a supported C data type.  It is a
-	  stanadard C89 type. AKC - 2004/10/22
-	- The IA64 will use ecc as the C++ compiler by default.
-        - Added some initial support for making valgrind/Purify (or similar
-            memory checking products) happier by initializing buffers to zero
-            and disabling the internal free list code.  To take advantage of
-            this, use the "--enable-using-memchecker" configure option when
-            building the library.  QAK - 2004/07/23
-        - Fixed the long compile time of H5detect.c when v7.x Intel Compiler
-	    is used with optimization NOT off.  AKC - 2004/05/20
-	- Fixed configure setting of C++ for OSF1 platform. AKC - 2004/01/06
-        - Prefix default is changed from /usr/local to `pwd`/hdf5.
-            AKC - 2003/07/09
+    -------------
 
     Library:
     --------
-       - Removed size restrictions on attributes, when using the "latest"
-            version of the file format. - QAK - 2007/02/21
-       - Relaxed restrictions on attribute operations to allow a file ID to
-            be used as the "location ID".  If a file ID is used, the attribute
-            operation will occur on the root group of the file.
-            - QAK - 2007/02/09
-       - Enabled the CORE driver to read an existing file depending on 
-            the setting of the backing_store for H5Pset_fapl_core and file 
-            open flags. - SLU - 2006/11/30
-       - Added new H5Gget_info_by_idx() routine to query the information about
-            a group according to the order within an index.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/27
-       - Added new H5Gget_info() routine to query the information about a
-            group by name.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/27
-       - Added new H5Oget_info_by_idx() routine to query the information about
-            an object in a group according to the order within an index.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/26
-       - Added new H5Oget_info() routine to query the information about an
-            object in a group by name.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/26
-       - Added new H5Oopen_by_idx() routine to open an object in a group
-            according to the order within an index.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/20
-       - Added new H5Literate() routine to iterate over links in a group
-            according to the order within an index.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/20
-       - Added new H5Ldelete_by_idx() routine to delete a link according to
-            the order within an index.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/13
-       - Added new H5Lget_val_by_idx() routine to query the value of a soft link
-            according to the order within an index.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/13
-       - Added new H5Lget_name_by_idx() routine to query the name of a link
-            according to the order within an index.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/12
-       - Added new H5Rget_name() routine to determine the name of the object
-            that a reference points to, as long as the object is still
-            reachable in the group hierarchy.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/10
-       - Added new H5Lget_info_by_idx() routine to query the link information
-            according to the order within an index.
-            - QAK - 2006/11/10
-       - Added feature to H5Iget_name to allow retrieving the name of any
-            object's ID, as long as the object is still reachable in the
-            group hierarchy.
-            - LA - 2006/11/01
-       - Added External and User-defined links.
-            External links are links from one HDF5 file to another; they
-            require both the name of the file and a path within that file.
-            User-defined links allow users to supply callback functions
-            for link traversals, allowing links to exhibit essentially
-            any behavior.
-            External links are a kind of user-defined link, so their default
-            behavior can be overridden by the user.
-            -JML 2006/8/23
-       - Added H5Oopen and H5Oclose for opening objects of unknown type
-            (as link callback functions do).
-            -JML 2006/8/23
-       - Added H5Oopen_by_addr, H5Oincr_refcount, and H5Odecr_refcount for
-            opening objects by address.  Be very careful with these!
-            -JML 2006/8/23
-       - Added H5Fget_intent to get the "intent" of a file (whether it
-            was opened with read-write access or read-only.
-            -JML 2006/8/23
-       - Added Link Access Property Lists. They currently contain two
-            properties, nlinks (H5Pget/set_nlinks) and elink_prefix
-            (H5Pget/set_elink_prefix). nlinks controls how many soft and
-            user-defined traversals are allowed before HDF5 assumes it has
-            found a cycle (previously this defaulted to 16).
-            The elink_prefix is a filesystem path that is prefixed to the
-            names of any external link files opened using this LAPL.
-            -JML 2006/8/23
-       - Add H5L link APIs.  Old APIs (H5Glink, H5Gmove, etc.) are still
-         supported but deprecated.
-         New APIs are:
-            H5Llink - create a link to an object given its ID
-            H5Lmove - just like H5Gmove2
-            H5Lcopy - copy a link without copying the underlying object
-            H5Lcreate_hard - like H5Glink2 for hard links
-            H5Lcreate_soft - like H5Glink2 for soft links
-            H5Ldelete - just like H5Gunlink
-            H5Lget_val - just like H5Gget_linkval
-            H5Lget_info - gets link-specific info (like H5Gget_objinfo)
-
-         In addition, H5Gcreate_anon, H5Tcommit_anon, and H5Dcreate_anon
-         no longer create links to objects; objects must be manually linked
-         using H5Llink or they will be deleted when the ID is closed.
-
-         Link Creation Property Lists can be used to pass character
-         encoding (ASCII or UTF-8) for link names and to set the Intermediate
-         Group Creation Flag:
-            H5Pset_char_encoding, H5Pget_char_encoding
-            H5Pset_copy_object, H5Pget_copy_object
-         -JML 2006/7/5
-       - Added managements of collective IO supports for chunking storage
-         inside parallel HDF5
-         1) Implemented One IO with collective mode for all chunks in the
-            application by building one MPI derived datatype accross all
-            chunks.
-         2) Implemented the decision-making support to do collective IO inside
-            MPI-IO per chunk. 
-         3) Added the decision-making support to do one IO accross all chunks
-            or to do multiple IOs with each IO per chunk.
-         4) Added the support to handle the case some processes won't do any IOs in 
-            collectively.
-         5) Some MPI-IO package(mpich 1.2.6 or lower, e.g.) cannot handle
-            collective IO correctly for the case when some processes have no
-            contributions to IOs, a special macro is added to change
-            collective IO mode to independent IO mode inside HDF5 library.
-
-            Currently we find that MPICH at Linux and vender MPI-IO package at NCSA
-            Altix cannot handle this case. 
-            
-             "hdf5_mpi_special_collective_io_works=${hdf5_mpi_special_collective_io_works='no'}"
-              has been added at the end of file <ia64-linux-gnui> and
-                                                 <linux-gnulibc1>.
-
-             If MPI-IO packages at your Linux and Altix support this case,
-             please comment out the last line and report to us at
-             help@hdfgroup.org. We can tune in our configuration to
-             support this.                                                     
- 
-             KY - 2006/02/16
-       - Added character encoding to attribute creation property lists.
-            JML - 2006/01/02
-       - Added H5Gcopy() routine to copy objects between while keeping
-         data in compressed form.  QAK - 2005/11/06
-       - Added H5Sextent_equal() routine.  QAK - 2005/11/06
-       - Added HSYS_ERROR which retrieves the system error message and pushes
-         it to the error stack.  This gives more information of the failed
-	 system call. AKC - 2005/08/04
-       - Added H5F_OBJ_LOCAL flag to H5Fget_obj_count() & H5Fget_obj_ids(), to
-         allow querying for objects in file that were opened with a particular
-         file ID, instead of all objects opened in file with any file ID.
-         QAK - 2005/06/01
-       - Added H5T_CSET_UTF8 character set to mark datatypes that use the
-         UTF-8 Unicode character encoding.  Added tests to ensure that
-         library handles UTF-8 object names, attributes, etc. -JL 2005/05/13
-       - HDF5 supports collective MPI-IO for irregular selection with HDF5
-         dataset. Irregular selection is when users use H5Sselect_hyperslab
-         more than once for the same dataset.
-         Currently, not all MPI-IO packages support complicated MPI derived
-                     datatype used in the implementation of irregular
-                     selection INSIDE HDF5. 
-                     1) DEC 5.x is not supporting complicated derived datatype.
-                     2) For AIX 5.1,
-                     if your poe version number is 3.2.0.19 or lower,
-                     please edit powerpc-ibm-aix5.x under hdf5/config,
-                     Find the line with
-                            << hdf5_mpi_complex_derived_datatype_works>>
-                     and UNCOMMENT this line before the configure.
-                     check poe version with the following command:
-                     lpp -l all | grep ppe.poe
-                     3) For Linux cluster, 
-                        if mpich version is 1.2.5 or lower, collective irregular selection
-                        IO is not supported, internally independent IO is used.
-                     4) For IRIX 6.5,
-                        if C compiler version is 7.3 or lower, collective irregular selection
-                        IO is not supported, internally independent IO is used.
-                     5) For platforms which internally used mpich, if the
-                        mpich version is 1.2.5 or lower, please find the 
-                        corresponding config file and add
-                        hdf5_mpi_complex_derived_datatype_works='no' at the
-                        end of the configuration file. For example, at NCSA
-                        SGI Altix, the internal mpich library is 1.2.5. So 
-                        hdf5_mpi_complex_derived_datatype_works='no' should be
-                        added at the end of the config file ia64-linux-gnu.
-                     KY - 2005/09/12
-        We also found not all MPI-IO packages support collective IO with one
-                    or more processes to have no contributions to IO.
-                     For mpich version 1.2.6 or lower and all IRIX machine, 
-                     if the library  checks that there are no IO contributions for some
-                     processes, collective IO request is replaced with
-                     independent inside HDF5.
-                     KY - 2006/05/04
-                    
-        - HDF5 N-bit filter 
-          HDF5 support N-bit filter from this version,  
-          The N-Bit filter is used effectively for compressing data of N-Bit
-          datatype as well as compound and array datatype with N-Bit fields. 
-          KY - 2005/04/15
-        - HDF5 scaleoffset filter
-          HDF5 supports scaleoffset filter for users to do data
-          compression through HDF5 library. 
-          Scale-Offset compression performs a scale and/or offset operation
-          on each data value and truncates the resulting value to a minimum 
-          number of bits and then stores the data.
-          Scaleoffset filter supports floating-point and integer datatype.
-          Please check the HDF5 reference manual for this.
-          KY - 2005/06/06
-        - Retired SRB vfd (--with-srb). Functions H5Pset_fapl_srb and
-          H5Pget_fapl_srb were removed.  EIP - 2005/04/07
-	- Retired GASS vfd (--with-gass).  Functions H5Pset_fapl_gass and
-	  H5Pget_fapl_gass are removed too.  AKC - 2005/3/3
-        - Pablo was removed from the source code EIP - 2005/01/21
-        - Modified registration of SZIP to dynamically detect the presence
-            or absence of the encoder.  Changed configure and Makefiles,
-            and tests to dynamically detect encoder. BEM - 2004/11/02
-	- Added function H5Pget_data_transform, together with the previously
-	    added H5Pset_data_transform, to support the data transform
-	    feature. AKC - 2004/10/26
-        - Compound datatype has been enhanced with a new feature of size 
-            adjustment.  The size can be increased and decreased(without
-            cutting the last member) as long as it doesn't go down to zero.  
-            No API change is involved.  SLU - 2004/10/1
-        - Put back 6 old error API functions to be backward compatible with
-            version 1.6.  They are H5Epush, H5Eprint, H5Ewalk, H5Eclear,
-            H5Eset_auto, H5Eget_auto.  Their new equivalent functions are
-            called H5Epush_stack, H5Eprint_stack, H5Ewalk_stack,
-            H5Eclear_stack, H5Eset_auto_stack, H5Eget_auto_stack.  SLU -
-            2004/9/2
-        - 4 new API functions, H5Tencode, H5Tdecode, H5Sencode, H5Sdecode were
-            added to the library.  Given object ID, these functions encode and 
-            decode HDF5 objects(data type and space) information into and from 
-            binary buffer.        SLU - 2004/07/21
-        - Modified the way how HDF5 calculates 'pixels_per_scanline' parameter for 
-            SZIP compression. Now there is no restriction on the size and shape of the
-            chunk except that the total number of elements in the chunk cannot be 
-            bigger than 'pixels_per_block' parameter provided by the user.  
-                                                                     EIP - 2004/07/21  
-        - Added support for SZIP without encoder.  Added H5Zget_filter_info
-            and changed H5Pget_filter and H5Pget_filter_by_id to support this
-            change.  JL/NF - 2004/06/30
-        - SZIP always uses K13 compression.  This flag no longer needs to
-            be set when calling H5Pset_szip.  If the flag for CHIP
-            compression is set, it will be ignored (since the two are mutually
-            exclusive).  JL/NF - 2004/6/30
-        - A new API function H5Fget_name was added.  It returns the name
-            of the file by object(file, group, data set, named data type,
-            attribute) ID.  SLU - 2004/06/29
-        - Added support for user defined identifier types.  NF/JL - 2004/06/29
-        - A new API function H5Fget_filesize was added.  It returns the
-            actual file size of the opened file.  SLU - 2004/06/24
-	- New Feature of Data transformation is added.  AKC - 2004/05/03.
-        - New exception handler for datatype conversion is put in to 
-            replace the old overflow callback function.  This exception
-            handler is set through H5Pset_type_conv_cb function.
-            SLU - 2004/4/27
-        - Added option that if $HDF5_DISABLE_VERSION_CHECK is set to 2,
-	    will suppress all library version mismatch warning messages.
-	    AKC - 2004/4/14
-	- A new type of dataspace, null dataspace(dataspace without any 
-            element) was added.  SLU - 2004/3/24
-        - Data type conversion(software) from integer to float was added.
-            SLU - 2004/3/13 
-        - Data type conversion(software) from float to integer was added.
-            Conversion from integer to float will be added later.  
-            SLU -2004/2/4
-        - Added new H5Premove_filter routine to remove I/O pipeline filters
-            from dataset creation property lists.  PVN - 2004/01/26
-        - Added new 'compare' callback parameter to H5Pregister & H5Pinsert
-            routines.  QAK - 2004/01/07
-        - Data type conversion(hardware) between integers and floats was added.
-            SLU 2003/11/21
-        - New function H5Iget_file_id() was added.  It returns file ID given
-            an object(dataset, group, or attribute) ID.  SLU 2003/10/29
-        - Added new fields to the H5G_stat_t for more information about an
-            object's object header.  QAK 2003/10/06
-        - Added new H5Fget_freespace() routine to query the free space in a
-            given file.  QAK 2003/10/06
-        - Added backward compatability with v1.6 for new Error API. SLU - 
-            2003/09/24
-        - Changed 'objno' field in H5G_stat_t structure from 'unsigned long[2]'
-            to 'haddr_t'.  QAK - 2003/08/08
-        - Changed 'fileno' field in H5G_stat_t structure from 'unsigned long[2]'
-            to 'unsigned long'.  QAK - 2003/08/08
-        - Changed 'hobj_ref_t' type from structure with array field to 'haddr_t'.
-            QAK - 2003/08/08
-        - Object references (hobj_ref_t) can now be compared with the 'objno'
-            field in the H5G_stat_t struct for testing if two objects are the
-            same within a file.  QAK - 2003/08/08
-        - Switched over to new error API. SLU - 2003/07/25
 
     Parallel Library:
     -----------------
-	- Added mpich2 as a testing "platform" informally. AKC - 2005/9/28.
-	- A dataset created in serial mode with H5D_ALLOC_TIME_INCR allocation
-	  setting was not extendible, either explicitly by H5Dextend or
-	  implicitly by writing to unallocated chunks.	Library now allocates
-	  more space when needed or directed if the file is opened by parallel
-	  mode, independent of what the dataset allocation mode is.
-	  CC/AKC - 2005/08/29.
-        - Allow compressed, chunked datasets to be read in parallel.
-            QAK - 2004/10/04
-        - Add options of using atomicity and file-sync to test_mpio_1wMr.
-            AKC - 2003/11/13
-        - Added parallel test, test_mpio_1wMr, which tests if the
-            underlaying parallel I/O system is conforming to the POSIX
-            write/read requirement.  AKC - 2003/11/12
 
     Fortran Library:
     ----------------
-         - added support for shared Fortran libraries.  -JML 2005/09/20
-         - added missing h5tget_member_class_f function
-                                                 EIP 2005/04/06         
-         - added new functions h5fget_name_f and h5fget_filesize_f 
-                                                 EIP 2004/07/08
-         - h5dwrite/read_f and h5awrite/read_f functions only accept dims parameter
-            of the type INTEGER(HSIZE_T).
-         - added support for native integers of 8 bytes (i.e. when special
-           compiler flag is specified to set native fortran integers to 8 bytes,
-           for example, -i8 flag for PGI and Absoft Fortran compilers, 
-           -qintsize=8 flag for IBM xlf compiler).
-                                                 EIP 2005/06/20
-         - added support for "big" REAL and DOUBLE PRECISION types
-           (usually the size is specified by compilers flags like 
-            -r8, -r16, etc.)
-           Known problem: multi file test fails when REAL is 16 bytes.
-                                                EIP 2005/09/8
 
     C++ Library:
     ----------------
-        - added support for shared C++ libraries.  -JML 2005/09/20
-        - Added missing member functions
-                H5::CompType::getMemberArrayType
-                H5::CompType::getMemberVarLenType
-                H5::AbstractDs::getArrayType
-                H5::AbstractDs::getVarLenType
-                H5::CommonFG::openArrayType
-                H5::CommonFG::openVarLenType
-                H5::PropList::copyProp -- this will replace the current
-                        H5::PropList::copyProp in later releases due
-                        to incorrect prototype.
-                H5::IdComponent::getHDFObjType
-                BMR - 2005/08/08
 
 
     Tools:
     ------
-        - h5repack and h5diff changed command line parameter syntax to be
-           similar to h5dump, adding also long switch names. PVN - 2008/1/16
-     	- h5repack now supports adding multiple filters to all objects. 
-	   PVN - 2008/1/16
-        - h5dump lists groups and attributes in requested orders (by name and 
-           creation order, both ascending and descending). PVN - 2007/10/5
-        - h5import imports string (text) data. PVN - 2007/10/5
-        - h52gif and gif2h5: Both these tools were revised to include the High
-          Level Image API support, and tests were added to /hl/tools/gif2h5.
-           PVN - 2007/04/13
-        - h5dump: added support for double long type H5T_NATIVE_LDOUBLE. PVN
-           2007/03/13
-        - h5dump: added support for binary output, see usage. PVN 2007/03/13
-        - h5repack: added support for the new nbit and scaleoffset filters.
-           PVN - 2007/05/07
-        - h5repack: now uses the API function H5Ocopy (of the tool h5copy) to
-           recreate objects if there is not a user input for changes. PVN -
-           2007/05/07
-        - h5repack: added support for reading and repacking  by hyperslabs for
-           large files. PVN - 2007/03/01
-        - h5repack: a new option allows the copy using the file type (default)
-           instead of the previous conversion to native type. PVN - 2007/03/01
-        - h5repack: output the percentage of compression used. PVN - 2007/03/01
-        - h5diff: added support for -p option for unsigned long_long data. PVN
-          - 2007/02/26
-        - h5diff: added support for comparing dataset regions. PVN - 2007/02/20
-        - h5diff: added support for reading and comparing by hyperslabs for large files.
-           PVN - 2007/02/20
-        - h5diff: printing of dataset dimensions along with dataset name. PVN -2007/02/19
-        - h5dump now uses the new API function H5Rget_name to display the name
-          of the dataset referenced instead of its ID. PVN - 2007/02/19
-        - Added new tool, h5mkgrp. QAK - 2007/02/14
-        - Added new tool, h5copy. PVN - 2006/7/15
-	- Removed obsolete pdb2hdf5 tool from tools/misc  -JML 2005/10/24
-	- Added build_h5perf_alone.sh that builds h5perf by standalone mode.
-	  AKC - 2005/09/18.
-        - Sped up h5dump on files with large numbers of objects.
-            QAK - 2005/08/25
-        - Added a standalone mode for building h5perf.  AKC - 2005/08/12
-        - new tool, h5jam. See reference manual.  2004/10/08
-        - h5repack.sh did not report errors encountered during tests.  It does
-            now.  AKC - 2004/04/02
-        - Added the MPI-I/O and MPI-POSIX drivers to the list of VFL drivers
-            available for h5dump and h5ls.  RPM & QAK - 2004/02/01
-        - Added option --vfd= to h5ls to allow a VFL driver to be selected
-            by a user.  RPM & QAK - 2004/02/01
-	- Added option -showconfig to compiler tools (h5cc,h5fc,h5c++).
-	    AKC - 2004/01/08
-        - Install the "h5cc" and "h5fc" tools as "h5pcc" and "h5pfc"
-            respectively if library is built in parallel mode.
-            WCW - 2003/11/04
-        - Added metadata benchmark (perform/perf_meta).  SLU - 2003/10/03
-        - Changed output of "OID"s from h5dump from "<number>-<number>" to
-            "<number".  This affects both the "regular" and XML output.
-            QAK - 2003/08/08
-        - Changed output of file IDs and "OID"s from h5ls from
-            "<number>:<number>:<number>:<number>" to "<number>:<number>"
-            QAK - 2003/08/08
 
     High-Level APIs:
     ------
-        - Fortran interfaces for the Image, Table and Lite APIs. PVN - 2007/5/1
-        - New HDF5 Dimension Scale API (H5DS) allows dimension scales to be
-          created in an HDF5 file and associated with specific datasets. PVN - 2007/5/1
-        - There are two new functions in the Lite library, H5LTtext_to_dtype
-            and H5LTdtype_to_text.  H5LTtext_to_dtype creates a HDF5 data type
-            given a text description; H5LTdtype_to_text converts a data type
-            to text description.  Only DDL definition is supported as text 
-            desciption now. SLU - 2006/05/17
-        - Added Packet Table API for creating tables with less overhead than
-            H5TB API.  Added C++ wrapper for Packet Tables.  See documentation.
-            JML - 2004/03/28
     
     Documentation 
     ------------- 
-        - The documentation for this release is largely complete, but 
-            trails the source code.  A few of the newer functions are 
-            not yet documented.                       FMB - 2007/04/18
-        - The user documents for this release can be accessed directly at
-            this location:
-               http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_1.8pre/doc/
-            The most recent document versions (updated daily) in the 
-            1.8 development branch can be accessed at this location:
-               http://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/HDF5/doc_dev_snapshot/H5_dev/
-                                                      FMB - 2007/04/18
-
 
 Support for new platforms, languages and compilers.
 =======================================
-        - Added support for Free-BSD on amd64 with GNU C and Fortran compilers
-          4.2.1
-                                                     EIP - 2007/06/25
-        - Added support for sequential and parallel libraries for Intel 64 Linux
-          cluster (abe.ncsa.uiuc.edu).  Among three MPICH packages available on
-          this machine, only Open MPI works.  The VMI has seg fault in hyperslab.c
-          and bittests.c tests.  The MVAPICH2 complained about mpd not running 
-          the parallel test.  (see Known Problems section for more info)
-                                                     EIP - 2007/06/25
-        - Added support for HPUX11.23 for both 32 and 64-bit; HDF5 C++
-        - Added support for 64-bit Windows with Visual Studio .NET and 2005.
-            SJW - 2007/06/25
-        - Added suport for HPUX11.23 for both 32 and 64-bit; HDF5 C++
-          shared library is not supported with +DD64 flag.
-                                                     EIP - 2006/06/22
-        - Added support for VAX floating numbers for Alpha Open VMS 7.3.2
-                                                     EIP - 2006/05/05
-        - Fixed broken make.com files in tools directories
-                                                     EIP - 2006/05/05
-        - Added support for Alpha Open VMS 7.3.2 EIP - 2006/04/15
-        - Added support for Cray X1.  JML - 2005/10/03
-        - PGI Fortran compiler is supported on Linux64 systems (x86_64)
-                            EIP - 2004/08/19
-        - Absoft compiler f95 v9.0 supported on Linux 2.4
-                            EIP - 2004/07/29
-        - HDF5 Fortran APIs are supported on Mac OSX with IBM XL Fortran
-            compiler version 8.1. This is a default compiler.
-        - HDF5 Fortran APIs are supported on MAC OSX with Absoft F95 compiler
-            version 8.2; set F9X environment varibale to f95, for example
-            setenv F9X f95
-            Use --disable-shared --enable-static configure flags when Absoft
-            compiler is used.
-                             EIP - 2004/07/27
-        - HDF5 Fortran APIs are supported on MAC OSX with IBM XL Fortran
-            Compiler version 8.1 Use "--disable-shared --enable-static"
-            configure flags along with the "--enable-fortran" flag to build
-            Fortran library.  EIP - 2004/01/07
-
-Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.6.0 release
+
+Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.8.0 release
 ==================================
 
     Library
     -------
-        - Changed library's behavior for reading files that might have
-            corrupted object header information from a previous (buggy)
-            version of the library.  By default, the library now rebuilds the
-            correct object header information instead of issuing an error.
-            Previous "strict" file format interpretation can be enabled with
-            the "--enable-strict-format-checks" configure option.
-            QAK - 2008/01/13
-        - Fixed several bugs with writing fill values for datasets that have
-            a variable-length datatype or component datatype.  QAK - 2007/06/19
-        - STDIO driver didn't support files bigger than 2GB because the OFFSET
-            parameter of fseek is of type LONG INT, not big enough for big files.
-            Use fseeko instead for big files if it's available on the system.
-            SLU - 2007/4/5
-        - Fixed a bug in H5Sselect_valid() that caused an incorrect value to
-            be returned (0) instead of FAIL on error conditions such as the
-            selection or extent not being defined. CMC - 2007/01/17
-        - Fixed the MULTI driver problem (Bug #731) that corruptted the data.
-            SLU - 2007/1/12
-        - Fixed file corruption bug which could write an incorrect number of
-            messages to an object's header under certain circumstances.
-            Generally, the sequence of actions to generate this bug looks
-            like this:
-                - Create an object
-                - Close the file
-                - Re-open the file
-                - Add 2 (or more) attributes to the object
-                - Close the file
-                - Re-open the file
-                - Delete one of the attributes on the object
-                - Add a smaller attribute to the object
-                - Delete the smaller atttribute on the object
-                - Add a larger attribute on the object
-
-            After this, the number of header messages stored for the object
-            will be off by one.  Other sequences of modifying attributes on an
-            object could also trigger this bug.  If you are opening an
-            object and the bottom few messages of the HDF5 error stack
-            resembles this, the object has been affected by this bug:
-
-              #007: ../../hdf5_v1.6/src/H5C.c line 3887 in H5C_load_entry(): unable to load entry
-                major(08): Meta data cache layer
-                minor(40): Unable to load metadata into cache
-              #008: ../../hdf5_v1.6/src/H5Ocache.c line 332 in H5O_load(): corrupt object header - too few messages
-                major(12): Object header layer
-                minor(40): Unable to load metadata into cache
-
-            Specifically, "corrupt object header" is the best string to search
-            for in the HDF5 error stack output.
-
-            If your files have been affected by this bug, or you are concerned
-            that your files might have been, please contact the HDF Helpdesk
-            at help@hdfgroup.org for a tool to detect and repair files
-            affected by this problem.  QAK - 2006/6/16
-        - Fixed various problems with retrieving names of objects, especially
-            with mounted files.  QAK - 2005/12/25
-        - Fixed core dump when closing root groups opened through two different
-            file handles that operate on the same actual file.  QAK - 2005/10/02
-        - Corrected errors when performing various operations on a group opened
-            by dereferencing an object reference.  QAK - 2005/07/30
-        - Fixed a bug with named datatypes where a copy of a named datatype
-            used to create a dataset would accidentally use the original
-            named datatype for the dataset's datatype.  QAK - 2005/07/23
-        - Made H5Fget_name() be consistent and always return name of actual
-            file the ID is in.  (Instead of the name of the top file in a
-            file mounting hierarchy).  QAK - 2005/07/19
-        - Reworked internal file mounting semantics to hopefully eliminate
-            mounting problems.  We now require that files that are mounting
-            together all have the same "file close degree".  QAK - 2005/07/19
-        - More bug fixes on holding open files that are mounted and have
-            IDs open.  QAK - 2005/07/14
-        - Don't unmount child files until the parent file actually closes.
-            (Previously, if an object is holding open a file, the child files
-            would get unmounted too early).  QAK - 2005/07/05
-        - Fixed bug where unmounted files could cause the library to go into
-            an infinite loop when shutting down.  QAK - 2005/06/30
-        - The library didn't save the information of family driver in file.
-          The original file member size was lost after file was closed (see
-          bug #213).  This has been fixed by saving driver name and member
-          file size in the superblock.  SLU - 2005/6/24
-        - Fixed bug with hyperslab selections that use selection offsets and
-            operate on chunked datasets going into infinite loop or dumping
-            core.  QAK - 2005/06/17
-        - Corrected memory leak and possible corruption when opening a group.
-            QAK - 2005/06/17
-        - Added check for opaque datatype tags being too long (check against
-            H5T_OPAQUE_TAG_MAX, currently set to 256).  QAK - 2005/06/14
-        - Fixed various errors in maintaining names for open objects in the
-            face of unusual mount & unmount operations.  QAK - 2005/06/08
-        - "SEMI" and "STRONG" file close degree settings now apply only to the
-            particular file ID being closed, instead of operating on all open
-            file IDs for a given file.  QAK - 2005/06/01
-        - For family driver, the library didn't save member size in file.
-          When file is reopened, the size of 1st member file determine the 
-          member size.  Now member size is saved in file and is used to 
-          define member file size.  Wrong file access property of member size
-          will result in a failure.  Using any other driver except family 
-          will cause library to return error.  So is multi driver. SLU - 
-          2005/05/24  
-        - Fixed error in opening object in group that was opened in mounted
-          file which has been unmounted.  QAK - 2005/03/17
-        - Fixed a racing condition in MPIPOSIX virtual file drive close
-	  function.  Now all processes must completed the close before any
-	  of them is returned.  This prevents some "faster" processes start
-	  accessing the file for another purpose (e.g., open with truncate)
-	  while other "slower" processes have not closed the same file with
-	  the previous purpose.  AKC - 2005/03/01
-        - H5Tget_member_value calls for enum datatype didn't return correct 
-            value if H5Tenum_valueof was called first.  It's fixed.  SLU - 
-            2005/02/08
-        - For variable-length string, H5Tget_class returned H5T_STRING as its
-            class.  But H5Tdetect_class and H5Tget_member_class considered it
-            as H5T_VLEN.  This is fixed to let all these 3 functions treat it
-            as H5T_STRING.  SLU - 2005/02/08
-        - The byte order of 1-byte integer types was fixed as little endian
-            even on a big-endian machine.  This has been corrected.  SLU -
-            2005/02/07 
-        - Fix segmentation fault when calling H5Fflush with an attribute that
-            hasn't had a value written to it open.  QAK - 2004/10/18
-        - Back up supporting bitfield and time types in H5Tget_native_type.  
-            Leave it to future support.  The function simply returns error 
-            message of "not support" for bitfield and time types.  
-            SLU - 2004/10/5
-        - Fixed address check in Core VFL driver to avoid spurious address/size
-            overflows for odd valued addresses and/or sizes.  QAK - 2004/09/27
-	- Fixed parallel bug in which some processes attempted collective
-	    I/O while others did independent I/O.  Bug appeared when some
-	    processes used point selections, and others didn't.  JRM - 2004/9/15
-        - Corrected error where dataset region references were written in an
-            incorrect way on Cray machines.  PVN & QAK - 2004/09/13
-        - The H5Tget_native_type now determines the native type for integers 
-	    based on the precision. This is to avoid cases of wrongly converting 
-            an int to a short in machines that have a short of 8 bytes but with 
-	    32bit precision (e.g Cray SV1). PVN - 2004/09/07  
-        - Changed H5Dread() to not overwrite data in an application's buffer
-            with garbage when accessing a chunked dataset with an undefined
-            fill value and an unwritten chunk is uncountered.  QAK - 2004/08/25
-        - Fixed error which could cause a core dump when a type conversion
-            routine was registered after a compound datatype had been
-            converted and then an equivalment compound datatype was converted
-            again.  QAK - 2004/08/07
-        - Fixed memory overwrite when encoding "multi" file driver information
-            for file's superblock.  QAK - 2004/08/05
-        - Fixed obscure bug where a filter which failed during chunk allocation
-            could allow library to write uncompressed data to disk but think
-            the data was compressed.  QAK - 2004/07/29
-        - Fixed bug where I/O to an extendible chunked dataset with zero-sized
-            dimensions would cause library to fail an assertion.
-            QAK - 2004/07/27
-        - Fixed bug where chunked datasets which have filters defined,
-            allocation time set to "late" and whose chunks don't align with
-            the dataspace bounds could have incorrect data stored when
-            overwriting the entire dataset on the first write.  QAK - 2004/07/27
-        - Added check to ensure that dataspaces have extents set. JML-2004/07/26
-        - Fixed bug on some Solaris systems where HDF5 would try to use
-            gettimeofday() when that function didn't work properly.
-            JML - 2004/07/23
-        - Fixed bug in H5Sset_extent_simple where setting maximum size to
-            non-zero, then to zero would cause an error.  JML - 2004/07/20
-        - Allow NULL pointer for buffer parameter to H5Dread & H5Dwrite
-            when not writing data ("none" selection or hyperslab or point
-            selection with no elements defined).  QAK - 2004/07/20
-        - Calling H5Gcreate() on "/" or "." throws an error instead of
-            failing quietly. JML - 2004/07/19
-        - Fixed bug where setting file address size to be very small could
-            trigger an assert if the file grew to more than 64 KB.  Now throws
-            an error and data can be recovered. JL/NF - 2004/07/14
-        - Fixed bug where "resurrecting" a dataset was failing.
-            QAK - 2004/07/14
-        - Fixed bug where incorrect data could be read from a chunked dataset
-            after it was extended.  QAK - 2004/07/12
-        - Fixed failure to read data back from file of compound type with
-            variable-length string as field.  SLU - 2004/06/10
-        - Fixed potential file corruption bug when a block of metadata could
-            overlap the end of the internal metadata accumulator buffer and
-            the buffer would be extended correctly, but would incorrectly 
-            change it's starting address.  QAK - 2004/06/09
-        - Opaque datatype with no tag failed for some operations.  Fixed.
-            SLU - 2004/6/3 
-        - Fixed potential file corruption bug where dimensions that were
-            too large (a value greater than could be represented in 32-bits)
-            could cause the incorrect amount of space to be allocated in a
-            file for the raw data for the dataset.  QAK - 2004/06/01
-	- Fixed dtypes "sw long double -> double" failure in QSC class
-            machines.  AKC - 2004/4/16
-        - Fixed problem with fletcher32 filter when converting data of different
-	    endianess. PVN - 2004/03/10
-        - Fixed problem with H5Tget_native_type() not handling opaque fields
-            correctly.  QAK - 2004/01/31
-        - Fixed several errors in B-tree deletion code which could cause a
-            B-tree (used with groups and chunked datasets) to become corrupt
-            with the right sequence of deleted objects.  QAK - 2004/01/19
-        - Fixed small internal memory leaks of fill-value information.
-            QAK - 2004/01/13
-        - Fixed bug that caused variable-length datatypes (strings or sequences)
-            used for datasets in files with objects that were unlinked to
-            fail to be read/written to a file.  QAK - 2004/01/13
-        - Detect situation where szip 'pixels per block' is larger than the
-            fastest changing dimension of a dataset's chunk size and disallow
-            this (due to limits in szip library).  QAK - 2003/12/31
-        - Fixed bug with flattened hyperslab selections that would generate
-            incorrect hyperslab information with certain high-dimensionality
-            combinations of start/stride/count/block information.
-            QAK - 2003/12/31
-        - Fixed bug with variable-length datatypes used in compound datatypes.
-            SLU - 2003/12/29
-        - Fixed bug in parallel I/O routines that would cause reads from
-            "short datasets" (datasets which were only partially written out)
-            to return invalid data.  QAK & AKC - 2003/12/19
-        - Fixed bug where scalar dataspaces for attributes were reporting as
-            simple dataspaces.  QAK - 2003/12/13
-        - Fixed problem with selection offsets of hyperslab selections in
-            chunked datasets causing the library to go into an infinite loop.
-            QAK - 2003/12/13
-        - Fixed H5Giterate to avoid re-using index parameter after iteration
-            callback has been called (allows iteration callback to modify the
-            index parameter itself).  QAK - 2003/12/06
-        - Fixed various floating-point conversion problems, including a
-            change which could corrupt data when converting from double->float.
-            QAK - 2003/11/24
-        - Changed "single process" metadata writing in library to collective
-            I/O by all processes, in order to guarantee correct data being
-            written with MPI-I/O.  QAK - 2003/11/20
-        - Fixed problems with fill values and variable-length types and also
-            I/O on VL values that were set to NULL.  QAK - 2003/11/08
-        - Fixed problems with MPI datatypes that caused ASCI Q machine to
-            hang.  QAK - 2003/10/28
-        - Removed HDF5_MPI_PREFER_DERIVED_TYPES environment variable support,
-            since it had no benefit.  QAK - 2003/10/28
-        - Single hyperslab selections (which were set with only one call to
-            H5Sselect_hyperslab) that had dimensions that could be "flattened"
-            but were interspersed with dimensions that could not be flattened
-            were not correctly handled, causing core dumps.  QAK - 2003/10/25
-        - Fixed incorrect datatype of the third parameter to the Fortran90
-            h5pset(get)_cache_f subroutine (INTEGER to INTEGER(SIZE_T)) 
-            EIP - 2003/10/13
-        - Fixed problems with accessing variable-length data datatypes on
-            Crays.  QAK - 2003/10/10
-        - Fixed potential file corruption bug when too many object header
-            messages (probably attributes, from a user perspective) were
-            inserted into an object header and certain other conditions were
-            met.  QAK - 2003/10/08
-        - Changed implementation of internal ID searching algorithm to avoid
-            O(n) behavior for many common cases.  QAK - 2003/10/06
-        - Allow partial parallel writing to compact datasets.  QAK - 2003/10/06
-        - Correctly create reference to shared datatype in attribute, instead
-            of making a copy of the shared datatype in the attribute.
-            QAK - 2003/10/01
-        - Revert changes which caused files >2GB to fail when created with
-            MPI-I/O file driver on certain platforms.  QAK - 2003/09/16
-        - Allow compound datatypes to grow in size.  SLU - 2003/09/10
-        - Detect if a type is already packed before attempting to pack it
-            again or check if it is locked.  SLU - 2003/09/10
-        - Corrected bug when opening a file twice with read-only permission
-            for one open and then closing the read-only access file ID would
-            generate an error.  QAK - 2003/09/10
-        - Corrected bug in repeated calls to H5Pget_access_plist() which would
-            incorrectly manage reference counts of internal information and
-            eventually blow up.  QAK - 2003/09/02
-        - Return rank of the array datatype on successful call to
-            H5Tget_array_dims().  QAK - 2003/08/30
-        - Corrected bug in H5Tdetect_class which was not correctly detecting
-            datatype classes of fields in nested compound datatypes in some
-            circumstances.  QAK - 2003/08/30
-        - Corrected bug in sieve buffer code which could cause loss of data
-            when a small dataset was created and deleted in quick succession.
-            QAK - 2003/08/27
-        - Corrected bug in H5Gget_objname_by_idx which was not allowing NULL
-            for the name when just querying for the object name's length.
-            QAK - 2003/08/25
-        - Corrected bug in variable-length string handling which could
-            generate a core dump on writing variable-length strings as part
-            of a compound datatype on certain architectures.  QAK - 2003/08/25
-        - Corrected bug in H5Tget_native_type which would incorrectly compute
-            the size of certain compound datatypes and also incorrectly
-            compute the offset of the last field for those compound datatypes.
-            QAK - 2003/08/25
-        - Corrected bug in H5Tget_native_type which would drop string datatype
-            metadata (padding, etc.)  QAK - 2003/08/25
-        - Corrected bugs in H5Gget_num_objs, H5Gget_objname_by_idx and
-            H5Gget_objtype_by_idx to allow them to accept location IDs, not just
-            group IDs.  QAK - 2003/08/21
-        - Corrected bug when using scalar dataspace for memory selection and
-            operating on chunked dataset.  QAK - 2003/08/18
-        - Corrected bugs with multiple '/' characters in names for H5Glink
-            and H5Gunlink.  QAK - 2003/08/16
-        - Corrected bug with user blocks that didn't allow a user block to
-            be inserted in front of a file after the file was created.
-            QAK - 2003/08/13
-        - Corrected errors with using point selections to access data in
-            chunked datasets.  QAK - 2003/07/23
-        - Corrected error with variable-length datatypes and chunked datasets
-            caused H5Dwrite to fail sometimes.  QAK - 2003/07/19
-        - Modified library and file format to support storing indexed storage
-            (chunked dataset) B-tree's with non-default internal 'K' values.
-            QAK - 2003/07/15
-        - Returned H5T_BKG_TEMP support to library after it was accidentally
-            removed.  QAK - 2003/07/14
+	- Fixed the problem with the searching of target file for H5Lcreate_external().
+	  The searching pattern will depend on whether the target file's
+	  pathname is an absolute or a relative path. Please see the description
+	  in the RM for H5Lcreate_external().  (VC - 4/8/08)
+        - Fixed possible file corruption bug when encoding datatype
+            descriptions for compound datatypes whose size was between
+            256 & 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 handle invalid location
+            ID correctly.  (QAK - 2008/03/11)
+
 
     Configuration
     -------------
-	- Configure can now use any tr command.  No more need for
-	  defining variable TR nor is it supported. -AKC 2006/05/19
-        - Parallel I/O with the MPI-I/O driver will no longer work if the
-            filesystem is not POSIX compliant.  The "HDF5_MPI_1_METAWRITE"
-            environment variable has been removed.  QAK - 2004/01/30
-        - Fixed the error that cause "make install" to fail because of the
-            macro definition syntax of "prefix?=..."  AKC - 2003/07/22
 
     Performance
     -------------
-        - Optimized I/O for enumerated datatypes that are a superset of source
-            enumerated datatype.  QAK - 2005/03/19
-        - More optimizations to inner loops of datatype conversions for
-            integers and floats which give a 10-50% speedup.  QAK - 2003/11/07
-        - Hoisted invariant 'if/else's out of inner datatype conversion loop for
-            integer and floating-point values, giving about a 20% speedup.
-            QAK - 2003/10/20
 
     Tools
     -----
-        - Fixed h5dump regarding the display of blocks in hyperslab
-           selections. PVN 2008/01/16
-        - Fixed h5diff regarding the display of NaN (Not a Number)
-           values. PVN 2008/01/16
-	- Fixed h5dump regarding the parsing of binary output parameters. 
-           PVN 2008/01/16
-	- Fixed memory problems in h52gif and gif2h5. PVN 2008/01/16
-	- Fixed h5repack dealing with NULL references. PVN 2008/01/16 
-        - Fixed h5dump & h5ls to display attributes in "name" order, rather
-           than the order they are encountered in the object header.
-           QAK - 2007/10/04
-        - Fixed h5dump regarding the display of named datatypes
-           attributes. PVN 2007/03/13
-        - Fixed h5dump regarding the display of group comments. PVN
-           2007/03/13
-        - Fixed h5dump regarding the display of hardlinks pointing 
-           to the root group. PVN 2007/03/13
-        - Fixed h5diff percentage option -p. PVN 2007/03/05
-        - Fixed h5dump that caused array indices greater than 2 ^32-1
-           not to be printed correctly - PVN 2007/2/19
-        - Fixed h5dump to print attributes data in ASCII if -r option is used.
-	    AKC - 2004/11/18
-        - Fixed space utilization reported in h5ls to correct error in formula
-            used.  QAK - 2004/10/22
-        - Fixed h5redeploy which sometimes complain too many argument for the
-            test command. (The complain did not hinder the h5redploy to
-            proceed correctly.) AKC - 2003/11/03
-        - Fixed a segmentation fault of h5diff when percentage option is used.
-            AKC - 2003/08/27
-        - Switched away from tools using internal "fixtype" function(s) to use
-            H5Tget_native_type() internally.  QAK - 2003/08/25
+        - Fixed bug in h5diff that prevented datasets & attributes with
+            variable-length string elements from comparing correctly.
+            (QAK - 2008/02/28)
+        - h5import bug on Windows w/binary datasets. fread in windows needs a
+            binary file to be open with 'rb' instead of 'r' otherwise it
+            terminates execution if an end of file character is found on the
+            input file. Besides that the binary file generated needs to be open
+            with 'wb' , otherwise an end of line character is read twice.
+            (PVN - 2008/02/19)
+        - 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)
+
 
 
     Documentation 
@@ -992,27 +111,23 @@ Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.6.0 release
 
     F90 APIs
     --------
-        - h5pget_driver_f was returning information that could not be
-          interpreted by fortran application program; fixed. EIP - 2005/04/10 
+
+
+    C++ APIs
+    --------
+        - Fixed bug that caused segfaults in Attribute::read. (BMR - 2008/04/20)
+        - Fixed bug in PropList::getClassName to use portable HDfree instead
+            of free. (BMR - 2008/04/20)
 
 
 Platforms Tested
 ================
-Platforms marked with * were not tested for hdf5-1.8.0-rc* release
-(This information is somewhat out of date and may be inaccurate.  It will be
-    updated for a later release)
 
-*   AIX 5.2 (32/64 bit)           xlc 8.0.0.11
+    AIX 5.2 (32/64 bit)           xlc 8.0.0.11
                                   xlC 8.0
                                   xlf 10.01.0000.0 
                                   mpcc_r 6.0.0.8
                                   mpxlf_r 8.1.1.7
-*    AIX 5.3 (32/64 bit)           xlc 7.0.0.8
-                                  xlC 7.0.0.8
-                                  xlf  09.01.0000.0007
-*   Cray X1 water 3.0.35          Cray Standard C Version 5.4.0.7.4
-                                  Cray Fortran 5.4.0.7.3
-                                  Cray C++ 5.4.0.7.4
     FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE i386       gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
     (duty)                        g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
                                   gcc 4.2.1 20080123
@@ -1024,14 +139,11 @@ Platforms marked with * were not tested for hdf5-1.8.0-rc* release
                                   g++ 4.2.1 20080123
                                   gfortran 4.2.1 20080123
 
-*   HP-UX B.11.23                 HP aC++/ANSI C B3910B A.06.00
-                                  HP F90 v2.9.2
-                                  HP aC++/ANSI C B3910B A.06.00
     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
+    Linux 2.6.9 (RHEL4)           Intel 10.0 compilers
     (abe.ncsa.uiuc.edu)
     Linux 2.4.21-47               gcc 3.2.3 20030502
     (osage)
@@ -1048,9 +160,6 @@ Platforms marked with * were not tested for hdf5-1.8.0-rc* release
     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 i86pc              Sun C 5.7
-                                  Sun Fortran 95 8.1
-                                  Sun C++ 5.7
     SunOS 5.10                    cc: Sun C 5.8 
     (linew)                       f90: Sun Fortran 95 8.2 
                                   CC: Sun C++ 5.8 
@@ -1075,105 +184,91 @@ Platforms marked with * were not tested for hdf5-1.8.0-rc* release
 
     MAC OS  10.4 (Intel)          gcc i686-apple-darwin8-gcc-4.0.1 (GCC) 4.0.1 
                                   G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.91!) Nov 21 2006)
-*    Alpha Open VMS 7.3
+    Alpha Open VMS 7.3
 
 
 Supported Configuration Features Summary
-(This table was not modified for 1.8.0-rc* release; for information contact help@hdfgroup.org)
 ========================================
 
     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
-SunOS5.8 64-bit          n        y      n        y     y     y
-SunOS5.8 32-bit          n        y      n        y     y     y
-SunOS5.10 64-bit         y(1)     y      n        y     y     y
-SunOS5.10 32-bit         y(1)     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
-Cray XT3           (16)  n        n      n        n     n     n
-AIX-5.2 & 5.3 32-bit     y        y      y        y     y     y
-AIX-5.2 & 5.3 64-bit     y        y      y        y     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 10.4 PowerPC    n               n
-FreeBSD 4.11             n        n      n        y     y     y
-RedHat EL3  W       (3)  y(1a)    y(10)  y(1a)    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(1a)    y(11)  n        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
-Alpha OpenVMS 7.3.2      n        y      n        y     n     n
-
-
-
-Platform                 Shared  Shared    Shared    static-  Thread-  
-                         C libs  F90 libs  C++ libs  exec     safe     
-Solaris2.8 64-bit        y       y         y         x        y        
-Solaris2.8 32-bit        y       y         y         x        y        
-Solaris2.10 64-bit       y                           x        y        
-Solaris2.10 32-bit       y                           x        y        
-IRIX64_6.5 64-bit        y       y         n         y        y        
-IRIX64_6.5 32-bit        y       dna       y         y        y        
-HPUX11.00                y       n         y         x        n        
-HPUX11.23-32bit          y       n         n         y        n        
-HPUX11.23-64bit          y       dna       n         y        n        
-Cray XT3           (16)  n       n         n         n        n        
-AIX-5.2 & 5.3 32-bit     n       n         n         y        n        
-AIX-5.2 & 5.3 64-bit     n       n         n         y        n        
-Windows XP               y       y(15)     y         y        y        
-Windows XP x64           y       y(15)     y         y        y        
-Windows Vista            y       n         n         y        y        
-Mac OS X 10.3            y                           y        n        
-Mac OS X 10.4 PowerPC
-FreeBSD 4.11             y       n         y         y        y        
-RedHat EL3  W       (3)  y       y(10)     y         y        y        
-RedHat EL3  W Intel (3)  y       y         y         y        n        
-RedHat EL3  W PGI   (3)  y       y         y         y        n        
-SuSe x86_64 W GNU (3,12) y       y         y         y        y        
-SuSe x86_64 W Int (3,12) y       y         y         y(14)    n        
-SuSe x86_64 W PGI (3,12) y       y         y         y(14)    n        
-Linux 2.4 Xeon C 
-    Lustre Intel    (6)  y       y         y         y        n        
-Linux 2.4 SuSE 
-    ia64 C Intel    (7)  y       y         y         y        n        
-Linux 2.4 SGI Altix 
-    ia64 Intel           y                           y        n        
-Alpha OpenVMS 7.3.2      n       n         n         y        n        
+          <blank> = testing incomplete on this feature or platform
+          W or C indicates workstation or cluster, respectively.
+
+Platform                          C        F90    F90      C++   zlib  SZIP
+                                  parallel        parallel
+SunOS5.8 64-bit                    n        y      n        y     y     y
+SunOS5.8 32-bit                    n        y      n        y     y     y
+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
+AIX-5.2  32-bit                    y        y      y        y     y     y
+AIX-5.2  64-bit                    y        y      y        y     y     y
+Cray XT3 (not tested
+          for this release)        n        n      n        n     n     n
+Windows XP                         n        y(3)   n(3)     y     y     y
+Windows XP x64                     n        y(3)   n(3)     y     y     y
+Windows Vista                      n        n      n        y     y     y
+Mac OS X 10.4 PowerPC              n               n
+Mac OS X 10.4 Intel                n        y      n        y     y     y
+FreeBSD 6.2 32-bit                 n        n      n        y     y     y
+FreeBSD 6.2 64-bit
+RedHat EL4 2.6.9 i686 GNU        W y(2)     y(4)   y(2)     y     y     y
+RedHat EL4 2.6.9 i686 Intel      W n        y      n        y     y     n
+RedHat EL4 2.6.9 i686 PGI        W n        y      n        y     y     n
+SuSe Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 GNU (5) W y(2)     y      n        y     y     y
+SuSe Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 Int (5) W n        y      n        y     n     n
+SuSe Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 PGI (5) W n        y      n        y     n     n
+RHL9 Linux 2.4 Xeon Lustre Intel C n        y      n        y     y     n
+RHEL3 Linux 2.4 Xeon Intel       W n        y      n        n     y     n
+RHEL4 Linux 2.6 Xeon Lustre Int  C n        y      n        y     y     n
+SuSE Linux 2.4 ia64 Intel        C y(1)     y      y        y     y     y
+SuSe Linux 2.6.5
+       SGI Altix ia64 Intel      C n        y      n        y     n     y
+Alpha OpenVMS 7.3.2                n        y      n        y     n     n
+
+
+
+Platform                          Shared   Shared    Shared    static-  Thread-
+                                  C libs   F90 libs  C++ libs  exec     safe
+SunOS 5.8 32-bit                    y        y         y         x        y
+SunOS 5.8 64-bit                    y        y         y         x        y
+SunOS 5.10 32-bit                   y        y         y         x        y
+SunOS 5.10 64-bit                   y        y         y         x        y
+IRIX64_6.5 32-bit                   y        n         y         x        y
+IRIX64_6.5 64-bit                   y        y         n         x        y
+AIX-5.2 32-bit                      n        n         n         x        n
+AIX-5.2 64-bit                      n        n         n         x        n
+Cray XT3 (not tested
+          for this release)         n        n         n         x        n
+Windows XP                          y        y(3)      y         y        y
+Windows XP x64                      y        y(3)      y         y        y
+Windows Vista                       y        n         n         y        y
+Mac OS X 10.4 Intel Duo             y        y         y         x        n
+FreeBSD 6.2 32-bit                  y        y         y         x        n
+FreeBSD 6.2 64-bit                  y        y         y         x        n
+RHEL4 2.6.9 i686 GNU              W y        y(4)      y         x        y
+RHEL4 2.6.9 i686 Intel            W y        y         y         x        n
+RHEL4 2.6.9 i686 PGI              W y        y         y         x        n
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 GNU (5)  W y        y         y         x        y
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 Intel(5) W y        y         y         x        n
+SuSE Linux 2.6.16 x86_64 PGI(5)   W y        y         y         x        n
+RHL9 Linux 2.4 Xeon Lustre Intel  C y        y         y         x        n
+RHEL3 Linux 2.4 Xeon Intel        W y        n         n         x        n
+RHEL4 Linux 2.6 Xeon Lustre Intel C y        y         y         x        n
+SuSE Linux 2.4 ia64 Intel         C y        y         y         x        n
+SuSe Linux 2.6.5
+           SGI Altix ia64 Intel   C n        n         n         x        n
 
     Notes: (1)  Using mpich 1.2.6.
-           (1a) Using mpich2 1.0.6.
-           (2)  Using mpt and mpich 1.2.6.
-           (3)  Linux 2.6 with GNU, Intel, and PGI compilers, as indicated.  
-                  W or C indicates workstation or cluster, respectively.
-
-           (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.
+           (2) Using mpich2 1.0.6.
+           (3) Using Visual Studio 2005 or Cygwin
+           (4) With PGI and Absoft compilers.
+           (5) AMD Opteron x86_64
     Compiler versions for each platform are listed in the preceding
     "Platforms Tested" table.
 
@@ -1310,12 +405,6 @@ Known Problems
       the different precision in the values displayed and h5ls appears to
       be dumping floating-point numbers correctly.
 
-* Before building HDF5 F90 Library from source on Crays 
-  replace H5Aff.f90, H5Dff.f90 and H5Pff.f90 files in the fortran/src
-  subdirectory in the top level directory with the Cray-specific files
-  from this site:
-       ftp://www.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/pub/outgoing/hdf5/hdf5-1.8.0-pre/PATCH/
-
 * 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
@@ -1328,23 +417,6 @@ Known Problems
   complaining about exit subroutine. Comment out the line 
   IF (total_error .ne. 0) CALL exit (total_error)
 
-* On IA32 and IA64 systems, if you use a compiler other than GCC (such as
-  Intel's ecc or icc compilers), you will need to modify the generated
-  "libtool" program after configuration is finished. On or around line 104 of
-  the libtool file, there are lines which look like:
-
-      # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
-      wl=""
-
-  change these lines to this:
-
-      # How to pass a linker flag through the compiler.
-      wl="-Wl,"
-
-  UPDATE: This is now done automatically by the configure script. However, if
-  you still experience a problem, you may want to check this line in the
-  libtool file and make sure that it has the correct value.
-
 * Information about building with PGI and Intel compilers is available in
   INSTALL file sections 5.7 and 5.8