path: root/release_docs/RELEASE.txt

HDF5 version 1.8.1-snap7 currently under development
================================================================================

INTRODUCTION
============

This document describes the differences between the HDF5-1.8.1-snap* releases 
and HDF5 1.8.1, and contains information on the platforms tested and known 
problems in HDF5-1.8.1-snap*.  For more details, see the files
HISTORY-1_0-1_8_0_rc3.txt and HISTORY-1_8.txt in the release_docs/ directory 
of the HDF5 source.

Links to the HDF5 1.8.1 source code, documentation, and additional materials
can be found on the HDF5 web page at:

     http://www.hdfgroup.org/products/hdf5/

The HDF5 1.8.1 release can be obtained from:

     http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/release/obtain5.html

User documentation for 1.8.1 can be accessed directly at this location: 

     http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/

New features in the HDF5-1.8.x release series, including brief general 
descriptions of some new and modified APIs, are described in the "What's New 
in 1.8.0?" document:

     http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/ADGuide/WhatsNew180.html

All new and modified APIs are listed in detail in the "HDF5 Software Changes 
from Release to Release" document, in the section "Release 1.8.1 (current 
release) versus Release 1.8.0":

     http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/ADGuide/Changes.html

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to the HDF Help Desk:

     help@hdfgroup.org


CONTENTS
========

- New Features
- Support for new platforms and languages
- Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.8.1
- Platforms Tested
- Supported Configuration Features Summary
- Known Problems


New Features
============

        Configuration
        -------------
        - None

        Source code distribution
        ========================

        Library
        -------
	- Added two new public routines: H5Pget_elink_fapl() and
      	  H5Pset_elink_fapl(). (see bug #1247) (VC - 2008/10/13)
        - Improved free space tracking in file to be faster. (QAK - 2008/10/06)
        - Added 'mounted' field to H5G_info_t struct. (QAK - 2008/07/15)

        Parallel Library
        ----------------
        - None

        Tools
        -----
        - h5repack: add a userblock to an HDF5 file during the repack. (PVN - 2008/08/26)
        - h5repack: add 2 options that call H5Pset_alignment in the repacked file. (PVN - 2008/08/29)
        - h5diff: new mode (-c contents), that checks if the objects in both files are 
            the same. (PVN - 2008/08/26)
        - h5ls: added capability to traverse through external links when the -r
            (recursive) flag is given. (NAF - 2008/09/16)
        - h5ls: added -E option to enable traversal of external links.  h5ls will
            not traverse external links without this flag being set.
            (NAF - 2008/10/06)



        F90 API
        ------
         - Added optional parameter 'mounted' to H5Gget_info_f, H5Gget_info_by_idx_f,
           H5Gget_info_by_name_f (MSB - 2008/09/24)
	 - Added H5Tget_native_type_f (MSB - 2008/09/30)
	 
	 
        C++ API
        ------
        - None


Support for New Platforms, Languages, and Compilers
===================================================
        - None


Bug Fixes since HDF5-1.8.1 
==========================

        Configuration
        -------------
	- The file libhdf5_fortran.settings is not installed since its content
	  is included in libhdf5.settings now. AKC - 2008/10/21
        - "make DESTDIR=xxx install" failed to install some tools and files
          (e.g., h5cc and fortran modules). Fixed. AKC - 2008/10/8.

        Source code distribution
        ========================

        Library
        -------
      - Corrected error with family/split/multi VFD not updating driver info
            when "latest" version of the file format used. (QAK - 2008/10/14)
        - Corrected alignment+threshold errors to work correctly when metadata
            aggregation is enabled. (QAK - 2008/10/06)
        - Changed H5Fget_obj_count and H5Fget_obj_ids to ignore objects
            registered by the library for internal library use.
            (NAF - 2008/10/06)
        - Fixed potential memory leak during compound conversion.
            (NAF - 2008/10/06)
        - Changed the return value of H5Fget_obj_count from INT to SSIZE_T. Also
            changed the return value of H5Fget_obj_ids from HERR_T to SSIZE_T and
            the type of the parameter MAX_OBJS from INT to SIZE_T. (SLU - 2008/09/26)
        - Fixed an issue that could cause data to be improperly overwritten
            during compound type conversion.  (NAF - 2008/09/19)
        - Fixed pointer alignment violations that could occur during vlen
            conversion.  (NAF - 2008/09/16)
        - Fixed problem where library could cause a segmentation fault when
            an invalid location ID was given to H5Giterate(). (QAK - 2008/08/19)
        - Fixed improper shutdown when objects have reference count > 1.  The
            library now tracks reference count due to the application separately
            from that due to internal library routines.  (NAF - 2008/08/19)
        - Fixed assertion failure caused by incorrect array datatype version.
            (NAF - 2008/08/08)
        - Fixed an issue where mount point traversal would fail when using
            multiple handles for the child.  (NAF - 2008/08/07)
        - Fixed an issue where mount points were inaccessible when using multiple
            file handles for the parent.  The mount table is now in the shared
            file structure (the parent pointer is still in the top structure).
            (NAF - 2008/08/07)
        - Fixed issue where a group could have a file mounted on it twice.
            (QAK - 2008/07/15)
        - when an attribute was opened twice and data was written with one of the handles, 
          the file didn't have the data.  It happened because each handle had its own 
          object structure, and the empty one overwrote the data with fill value.  This is
          fixed by making some attribute information like the data be shared in the 
          attribute structure.  SLU - 2008/07/07

        Parallel Library
        ----------------
        - None

        Tools
        -----
        - h5dump now checks for uniqueness of committed datatypes.
            (NAF - 2008/10/15)
        - Fixed unnecessary indentation of committed datatypes in h5dump.
            (NAF - 2008/10/15)
	- Fixed bugs in h5stat:segmemtation fault when printing groups and
          print warning message when traversal of objects is unsuccessful.
          (see bug #1253) (VC- 2008/10/13)
        - Fixed bug in h5ls that prevented relative group listings (like
            "h5ls foo.h5/bar") from working correctly (QAK - 2008/06/03)
        - h5dump: when doing binary output (-b), the stdout printing of attributes 
           was done incorrectly. Removed printing of attributes when doing binary 
           output. PVN - 2008/06/05


        F90 API
        ------
        - h5sselect_elements_f: Added additional operators H5S_SELECT_APPEND and 
           H5S_SELECT_PREPEND (MSB 9/30/2008)
	- h5sget_select_elem_pointlist: Fixed list of returned points by rearranging the point
           list correctly by accounting for C conventions.(MSB 9/30/2008)
        - h5sget_select_hyper_blocklist_f: Fixed error in transposed dimension of 
           arrays.(MSB 9/30/2008)
        - h5sget_select_bounds_f: Swapped array bounds to account for C and Fortran reversed 
           array notation (MSB 9/30/2008)
	- Changed to initializing string to a blank character instead of a null type in
           tH5P.f90 to fix compiling error using AIX 5.3.0 (MSB 7/29/2008)
        - Fixed missing commas in H5test_kind.f90 detected by NAG compiler (MSB 7/29/2008)
        - Fixed passing and array to a scalar in tH5A_1_8.f90 detected by 
           NAG compiler (MSB 7/29/2008)
	- Added the ability of the test programs to use the status of HDF5_NOCLEANUP to
	   determine if the *.h5 files should be removed or not after the tests are 
           completed (MSB 10/1/2008)
	- In nh5tget_offset_c: (MSB 9/12/2008)
           If offset was equal to 0 it returned the error code of -1, this was changed to return 
	   an error code of -1 when the offset value is < 0.
        - Uses intrinsic Fortran function SIZEOF if available when detecting type of INTEGERs
           and REALs in H5test_kind.f90 (MSB 9/3/2008)
        - Put the DOUBLE PRECISION interfaces in a separate module and added a USE statement for 
           the module. The interfaces are included/excluded depending on
           the state of FORTRAN_DEFAULT_REALisDBLE_F which detects if the default REAL 
           is DOUBLE PRECISION. This allows the library to be compiled with -r8 Fortran flag 
           without the user needing to edit the source code. (MSB 8/27/2008)
        - Enable building shared library for fortran by adding the flag -fPIC to the compile 
           flags for versions of Intel Fortran compiler >=9  (MSB 8/26/2008)

        C++ API
        ------
        - None


Platforms Tested
================
The following platforms and compilers have been tested for this release.

    Cray XT3 (2.0.41)             cc (pgcc) 7.1-4
    (red storm)                   ftn (pgf90) 7.1-4
				  CC (pgCC) 7.1-4
                                  mpicc 1.0.2
                                  mpif90 1.0.2

    FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE i386       gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
    (duty)                        g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
                                  gcc 4.2.1 20080123
                                  g++ 4.2.1 20080123
                                  gfortran 4.2.1 20070620

    FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE amd64      gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
    (liberty)                     g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
                                  gcc 4.2.1 20080123
                                  g++ 4.2.1 20080123
                                  gfortran 4.2.1 20080123

    IRIX64 6.5 (64 & n32)         MIPSpro cc 7.4.4m
                                  F90 MIPSpro 7.4.4m 
                                  C++ MIPSpro cc 7.4.4m

    Linux 2.6.9 (RHEL4)           Intel 10.0 compilers
    (abe.ncsa.uiuc.edu)

    Linux 2.4.21-47               gcc 3.2.3 20030502
    (osage)

    Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10           gcc,g++ 3.4.6 20060404, G95 (GCC 4.0.3) 
    (kagiso)                      PGI 7.1-6 (pgcc, pgf90, pgCC)
                                  Intel 9.1 (icc, ifort, icpc)

    Linux 2.6.16.27 x86_64 AMD    gcc 4.1.0 (SuSE Linux), g++ 4.1.0, 
    (smirom)                          g95 (GCC 4.0.3)
                                  PGI 7.2-1 (pgcc, pgf90, pgCC)
                                  Intel 10.1 (icc, ifort, icpc)

    Linux 2.6.5-7.252.1-rtgfx #1  Intel(R) C++ Version 9.0
          SMP ia64                Intel(R) Fortran Itanium(R) Version 9.0 
    (cobalt)                      SGI MPI

    SunOS 5.8 32,46               Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C 5.3
     (Solaris 2.8)                Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 Fortran 95 6.2
                                  Sun WorkShop 6 update 2 C++ 5.3

    SunOS 5.10                    cc: Sun C 5.8 
    (linew)                       f90: Sun Fortran 95 8.2 
                                  CC: Sun C++ 5.8 

    Xeon Linux 2.4.21-32.0.1.ELsmp-perfctr-lustre
    (tungsten)                    gcc 3.2.2 20030222
                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 9.0
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 9.0

    IA-64 Linux 2.4.21.SuSE_309.tg1 ia64
    (NCSA tg-login)               gcc 3.2.2
                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 8.1
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 8.1
                                  mpich-gm-1.2.6..14b-intel-r2

    Intel 64 Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10.EL_lustre-1.4.10.1smp
    (abe)                         gcc 3.4.6 20060404
                                  Intel(R) C++ Version 10.0
                                  Intel (R) Fortran Compiler Version 10.0
                                  mvapich2-0.9.8p2patched-intel-ofed-1.2

    Windows XP                    Visual Studio .NET
                                  Visual Studio 2005 w/ Intel Fortran 9.1
                                  Cygwin(native gcc compiler and g95)
                                  MinGW(native gcc compiler and g95)

    Windows XP x64                Visual Studio 2005 w/ Intel Fortran 9.1

    Windows Vista                 Visual Studio 2005

    MAC OS  10.5.2 (Intel)        i686-apple-darwin9-gcc-4.0.1 (GCC) 4.0.1
                                  GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.3.0 20070810
                                  G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.91!) Apr 24 2008)


Supported Configuration Features Summary
========================================

    In the tables below
          y   = tested and supported
          n   = not supported or not tested in this release
          x   = not working in this release
          dna = does not apply
          ( ) = footnote appears below second table
          <blank> = testing incomplete on this feature or platform 

Platform                 C        F90    F90      C++   zlib  SZIP
                         parallel        parallel
SunOS5.10 64-bit         n        y      n        y     y     y
SunOS5.10 32-bit         n        y      n        y     y     y
IRIX64_6.5 64-bit        n        y      y        y     y     y
IRIX64_6.5 32-bit        n        n      n        n     y     y
Windows XP               n        y(15)  n(15)    y     y     y
Windows XP x64           n        y(15)  n(15)    y     y     y
Windows Vista            n        n      n        y     y     y
Mac OS X 10.5 Intel      n        y      n        y     y     y
FreeBSD 4.11             n        n      n        y     y     y
RedHat EL3  W       (3)  y(1)     y(10)  y(1)     y     y     y
RedHat EL3  W Intel (3)  n        y      n        y     y     n
RedHat EL3  W PGI   (3)  n        y      n        y     y     n
SuSe x86_64 gcc  (3,12)  y(2)     y(11)  y(2)     y     y     y
SuSe x86_64 Int  (3,12)  n        y(13)  n        y     y     n
SuSe x86_64 PGI  (3,12)  n        y(8)   n        y     y     y
Linux 2.4 Xeon C 
    Lustre Intel  (3,6)  n        y      n        y     y     n
Linux 2.6 SuSE ia64 C 
    Intel         (3,7)  y        y      y        y     y     n
Linux 2.6 SGI Altix 
    ia64 Intel      (3)  y        y      y        y     y     y
Linux 2.6 RHEL C
    Lustre Intel    (5)  y(4)     y      y(4)     y     y     n
Cray XT3 2.0.41          y        y      y        y     y     n


Platform                 Shared  Shared    Shared    Thread-  
                         C libs  F90 libs  C++ libs  safe     
Solaris2.10 64-bit       y       y         y         y        
Solaris2.10 32-bit       y       y         y         y        
IRIX64_6.5 64-bit        y       y         n         y        
IRIX64_6.5 32-bit        y       dna       y         y        
Windows XP               y       y(15)     y         y        
Windows XP x64           y       y(15)     y         y        
Windows Vista            y       n         n         y        
Mac OS X 10.3            y                           n        
FreeBSD 4.11             y       n         y         y        
RedHat EL3  W       (3)  y       y(10)     y         y        
RedHat EL3  W Intel (3)  y       y         y         n        
RedHat EL3  W PGI   (3)  y       y         y         n        
SuSe x86_64 W GNU (3,12) y       y         y         y        
SuSe x86_64 W Int (3,12) y       y         y         n        
SuSe x86_64 W PGI (3,12) y       y         y         n        
Linux 2.4 Xeon C 
    Lustre Intel    (6)  y       y         y         n        
Linux 2.4 SuSE 
    ia64 C Intel    (7)  y       y         y         n        
Linux 2.4 SGI Altix 
    ia64 Intel           y                           n        
Linux 2.6 RHEL C
    Lustre Intel    (5)  y        y        y         n
Cray XT3 2.0.41          n       n         n         n        n

    Notes: (1)  Using mpich2 1.0.6.
           (2)  Using mpich2 1.0.7.
           (3)  Linux 2.6 with GNU, Intel, and PGI compilers, as indicated.  
                  W or C indicates workstation or cluster, respectively.
           (4)  Using mvapich2 0.9.8.
           (5)  Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10.  Xeon cluster with ELsmp_perfctr_lustre 
                  and Intel compilers
           (6)  Linux 2.4.21-32.0.1.  Xeon cluster with ELsmp_perfctr_lustre 
                  and Intel compilers
           (7)  Linux 2.4.21, SuSE_292.till.  Ia64 cluster with Intel compilers
           (8)  pgf90
           (9)  With Compaq Visual Fortran 6.6c compiler.
           (10) With PGI and Absoft compilers.
           (11) PGI and Intel compilers for both C and Fortran
           (12) AMD Opteron x86_64
           (13) ifort
           (14) Yes with C and Fortran, but not with C++
           (15) Using Visual Studio 2005 or Cygwin
           (16) Not tested for this release.
    Compiler versions for each platform are listed in the preceding
    "Platforms Tested" table.


Known Problems
==============
* For Red Storm, a Cray XT3 system, the yod command sometimes gives the
  message,  "yod allocation delayed for node recovery".  This interferes with
  test suites that do not expect seeing this message.  See the section of "Red
  Storm" in file INSTALL_parallel for a way to deal with this problem.
  AKC - 2008/05/28

* For Red Storm, a Cray XT3 system, the tools/h5ls/testh5ls.sh will fail on
  the test "Testing h5ls -w80 -r -g tgroup.h5" fails.  This test is
  expected to fail and exit with a non-zero code but the yod command does
  not propagate the exit code of the executables. Yod always returns 0 if it
  can launch the executable.  The test suite shell expects a non-zero for
  this particular test, therefore it concludes the test has failed when it
  receives 0 from yod.  To bypass this problem for now, change the following
  lines in the tools/h5ls/testh5ls.sh.
  ======== Original =========
  # The following combination of arguments is expected to return an error message
  # and return value 1
  TOOLTEST tgroup-1.ls 1 -w80 -r -g tgroup.h5
  ======== Skip the test =========
  echo SKIP TOOLTEST tgroup-1.ls 1 -w80 -r -g tgroup.h5
  ======== end of bypass ========
  AKC - 2008/05/28

* We have discovered two problems when running collective IO parallel HDF5 
  tests with chunking storage on the ChaMPIon MPI compiler on tungsten, a 
  Linux cluster at NCSA.

  Under some complex selection cases: 
  1) MPI_Get_element returns the wrong value.
  2) MPI_Type_struct also generates the wrong derived datatype and corrupt 
     data may be generated.
  These issues arise only when turning on collective IO with chunking storage 
  with some complex selections. We have not found these problems on other 
  MPI-IO compilers. If you encounter these problems, you may use independent 
  IO instead.

  To avoid this behavior, change the following line in your code
      H5Pset_dxpl_mpio(xfer_plist, H5FD_MPIO_COLLECTIVE);
  to
      H5Pset_dxpl_mpio(xfer_plist, H5FD_MPIO_INDEPENDENT);

  KY - 2007/08/24

* For SNL, spirit/liberty/thunderbird: The serial tests pass but parallel
  tests failed with MPI-IO file locking message. AKC - 2007/6/25

* On Intel 64 Linux cluster (RH 4, Linux 2.6.9) with Intel 10.0 compilers, 
  use -mp -O1 compilation flags to build the libraries. A higher level of 
  optimization causes failures in several HDF5 library tests. 

* For LLNL, uP: both serial and parallel tests pass.  
  Zeus: Serial tests pass but parallel tests fail with a known problem in MPI.
  ubgl: Serial tests pass but parallel tests fail. 

* Configuring with --enable-debug=all produces compiler errors on most
  platforms:  Users who want to run HDF5 in debug mode should use
  --enable-debug rather than --enable-debug=all to enable debugging
  information on most modules.

* On Mac OS 10.4, test/dt_arith.c has some errors in conversion from long
  double to (unsigned) long long and from (unsigned) long long to long double. 
+       - Fixed assertion failure caused by incorrect array datatype version.
+             (NAF - 2008/08/04)
* On Altix SGI with Intel 9.0, testmeta.c would not compile with -O3
  optimization flag.

* On VAX, the Scaleoffset filter is not supported.  The Scaleoffset filter 
  supports only the IEEE standard for floating-point data; it cannot be applied 
  to HDF5 data generated on VAX. 

* On Cray X1, a lone colon on the command line of h5dump --xml (as in
  the testh5dumpxml.sh script) is misinterpereted by the operating system
  and causes an error.

* On mpich 1.2.5 and 1.2.6, if more than two processes contribute no IO and 
  the application asks to do collective IO, we have found that when using 4 
  processors, a simple collective write will sometimes be hung. This can be 
  verified with t_mpi test under testpar.

* On IRIX6.5, when the C compiler version is greater than 7.4, complicated
  MPI derived datatype code will work. However, the user should increase
  the value of the MPI_TYPE_MAX environment variable to some appropriate value 
  to use collective irregular selection code.  For example, the current 
  parallel HDF5 test needs to raise MPI_TYPE_MAX to 200,000 to pass the test. 

* A dataset created or rewritten with a v1.6.3 library or after cannot be read 
  with the v1.6.2 library or before when the Fletcher32 EDC filter is enabled.
  There was a bug in the calculation of the Fletcher32 checksum in the 
  library before v1.6.3; the checksum value was not consistent between big-
  endian and little-endian systems.  This bug was fixed in Release 1.6.3.  
  However, after fixing the bug, the checksum value was no longer the same as 
  before on little-endian system.  Library releases after 1.6.4 can still read 
  datasets created or rewritten with an HDF5 library of v1.6.2 or before.  
  SLU - 2005/6/30

* For version 6 (6.02 and 6.04) of the Portland Group compiler on the AMD 
  Opteron processor, there is a bug in the compiler for optimization(-O2).  
  The library failed in several tests, all related to the MULTI driver.  
  The problem has been reported to the vendor.  

* On IBM AIX systems, parallel HDF5 mode will fail some tests with error
  messages like "INFO: 0031-XXX ...".  This is from the command `poe'.
  Set the environment variable MP_INFOLEVEL to 0 to minimize the messages
  and run the tests again.

  The tests may fail with messages like "The socket name is already in use",  
  but HDF5 does not use sockets.  This failure is due to problems with the 
  poe command trying to set up the debug socket.  To resolve this problem, 
  check to see whether there are many old /tmp/s.pedb.* files staying around.  
  These are sockets used by the poe command and left behind due to failed 
  commands.  First, ask your system administrator to clean them out.  
  Lastly, request IBM to provide a means to run poe without the debug socket.

* The --enable-static-exec configure flag fails to compile for Solaris
  platforms. This is due to the fact that not all of the system libraries on 
  Solaris are available in a static format.

  The --enable-static-exec configure flag also fails to correctly compile
  on IBM SP2 platforms for serial mode. The parallel mode works fine with 
  this option.
  
  It is suggested that you do not use this option on these platforms
  during configuration.

* With the gcc 2.95.2 compiler, HDF5 uses the `-ansi' flag during
  compilation. The ANSI version of the compiler complains about not being
  able to handle the `long long' datatype with the warning:

        warning: ANSI C does not support `long long'
  
  This warning is innocuous and can be safely ignored.

* The ./dsets tests fail on the TFLOPS machine if the test program,
  dsets.c, is compiled with the -O option.  The HDF5 library still works
  correctly with the -O option.  The test program works fine if it is
  compiled with -O1 or -O0.  Only -O (same as -O2) causes the test
  program to fail.

* Not all platforms behave correctly with Szip's shared libraries. Szip is
  disabled in these cases, and a message is relayed at configure time. Static
  libraries should be working on all systems that support Szip and should be
  used when shared libraries are unavailable. 

  There is also a configure error on Altix machines that incorrectly reports 
  when a version of Szip without an encoder is being used.

* On some platforms that use Intel and Absoft compilers to build the HDF5 
  Fortran library, compilation may fail for fortranlib_test.f90, fflush1.f90 
  and fflush2.f90 complaining about the exit subroutine. Comment out the line 
  IF (total_error .ne. 0) CALL exit (total_error).

* Information about building with PGI and Intel compilers is available in
  the INSTALL file sections 4.7 and 4.8.

* On at least one system, SDSC DataStar, the scheduler (in this case
  LoadLeveler) sends job status updates to standard error when you run 
  any executable that was compiled with the parallel compilers.

  This causes problems when running "make check" on parallel builds, as 
  many of the tool tests function by saving the output from test runs,
  and comparing it to an exemplar.  

  The best solution is to reconfigure the target system so it no longer
  inserts the extra text.  However, this may not be practical.

  In such cases, one solution is to "setenv HDF5_Make_Ignore yes" prior to 
  the configure and build.  This will cause "make check" to continue after 
  detecting errors in the tool tests.  However, in the case of SDSC DataStar,
  it also leaves you with some 150 "failed" tests to examine by hand.

  A second solution is to write a script to run serial tests and filter
  out the text added by the scheduler.  A sample script used on SDSC
  DataStar is given below, but you will probably have to customize it 
  for your installation.  

  Observe that the basic idea is to insert the script as the first item 
  on the command line which executes the the test.  The script then 
  executes the test and filters out the offending text before passing
  it on.

        #!/bin/csh

        set STDOUT_FILE=~/bin/serial_filter.stdout
        set STDERR_FILE=~/bin/serial_filter.stderr

        rm -f $STDOUT_FILE $STDERR_FILE

        ($* > $STDOUT_FILE) >& $STDERR_FILE

        set RETURN_VALUE=$status

        cat $STDOUT_FILE

        tail +3 $STDERR_FILE

        exit $RETURN_VALUE

  You get the HDF5 make files and test scipts to execute your filter script
  by setting the environment variable "RUNSERIAL" to the full path of the 
  script prior to running configure for parallel builds.  Remember to 
  "unsetenv RUNSERIAL" before running configure for a serial build.

  Note that the RUNSERIAL environment variable exists so that we can 
  prefix serial runs as necessary on the target system.  On DataStar,
  no prefix is necessary.  However on an MPICH system, the prefix might
  have to be set to something like "/usr/local/mpi/bin/mpirun -np 1" to
  get the serial tests to run at all.

  In such cases, you will have to include the regular prefix in your
  filter script.

* H5Ocopy() does not copy reg_ref attributes correctly when shared-message
  is turn on. The value of the reference in the destination attriubte is
  wrong. This H5Ocopy problem will affect the h5copy tool.

* In the C++ API, it appears that there are bugs in Attribute::write/read
  and DataSet::write/read for fixed- and variable-len strings.  The problems
  are being worked on and a patch will be provided when the fixes are
  available.