path: root/release_docs/RELEASE.txt

HDF5 version 1.8.2 released on Mon Nov 10 15:43:09 CST 2008
================================================================================

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

This document describes the differences between HDF5-1.8.1 and HDF5 1.8.2, 
and contains information on the platforms tested and known problems in 
HDF5-1.8.2. 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 1.8.2 source code, documentation, and additional materials
can be found on the HDF5 web page at:

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

The HDF5 1.8.2 release can be obtained from:

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

User documentation for 1.8.2 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 1.8.2 (current 
release) versus Release 1.8.1":

     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
        -------------
        - Upgraded libtool to version 2.2.6a. (MAM - 2008/10/15).

        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: added new options -u and -b to add a userblock to an HDF5 
          file during the repack.  (PVN - 2008/08/26)
        - h5repack: added options -t and -a to call H5Pset_alignment while 
          creating a repacked file. (PVN - 2008/08/29)
        - 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)
        - h5dump: when -b flag is used without a keyword after it, binary 
          output defaults to NATIVE. MEMORY keyword was deprecated 
          and replaced by NATIVE keyword. (PVN - 2008/10/30)
        - h5diff: returns 1 when file graphs differ by any object.  
          Error return code was changed to 2 from -1.  (PVN - 2008/10/30)
        - h5import: TEXTFPE (scientific format) was deprecated. Use TEXTFP 
          instead (PVN - 2008/10/30)



        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
        ------
        - These member functions were added as wrapper for H5Rdereference to
          replace the incorrect IdComponent::dereference().
             void H5Object::dereference(H5Object& obj, void* ref, 
                                        H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
             void H5Object::dereference(H5File& h5file, void* ref, 
                                        H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
             void H5Object::dereference(Attribute& obj, void* ref, 
                                        H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)

          In addition, these constructors were added to create the associated
          objects by way of dereference:
             DataSet(H5Object& obj, void* ref, H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
             DataSet(H5File& file, void* ref, H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
             DataSet(Attribute& attr, void* ref, H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
             Group(H5Object& obj, void* ref, H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
             Group(H5File& obj, void* ref, H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
             Group(Attribute& attr, void* ref, H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
             DataType(H5Object& obj, void* ref, H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
             DataType(H5File& file, void* ref, H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
             DataType(Attribute& attr, void* ref, H5R_type_t ref_type=H5R_OBJECT)
          (BMR - 2008/10/29)


Support for New Platforms, Languages, and Compilers
===================================================
        - Intel 10.1 is supported on Mac OS X 10.5.4.
          Note:
          When Fortran is enabled, configure automatically
          disables the build of shared libraries (i.e., only
          static C and C++ HDF5 libraries will be built
          along with the static HDF5 Fortran library).
          Intel 10.1 C and C++ compilers require 
          "-no-multibyte-chars" compilation flag due to the known
          bug in the compilers.
            (EIP - 2008/10/30)


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

        Configuration
        -------------
        - Fixed error with 'make check install' failing due to h5dump
          needing other tools built first. (MAM - 2008/10/15).
        - When using shared szip, it is no longer necessary to specify
          the path to the shared szip libraries in LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
           (MAM - 2008/10/15).
	- 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).

        Library
        -------
        - H5Ovisit and H5Ovisit_by_name will now properly terminate when the
            callback function returns a positive value on the starting object.
            (NAF - 2008/11/03)
        - Fixed an error where a null message could be created that was larger
            than could be written to the file.  (NAF - 2008/10/23)
        - 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 assertion failure caused by incorrect array datatype version.
            (NAF - 2008/08/04)
        - 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)
        - Fixed a Windows-specific issue in the ohdr test which was causing 
            users in some timezones to get false errors. This a deficiency in 
            the Windows mktime() function, and has been handled properly.  
            (SJW  - 2008/06/19)

        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 - 2008/09/30)
	- h5sget_select_elem_pointlist: Fixed list of returned points by 
            rearranging the point list correctly by accounting for C 
            conventions. (MSB - 2008/09/30)
        - h5sget_select_hyper_blocklist_f: Fixed error in transposed dimension 
            of arrays.(MSB - 2008/9/30)
        - h5sget_select_bounds_f: Swapped array bounds to account for C and 
            Fortran reversed array notation (MSB - 2008/9/30)
	- 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 - 2008/7/29)
        - Fixed missing commas in H5test_kind.f90 detected by NAG compiler 
            (MSB - 2008/7/29)
        - Fixed passing and array to a scalar in tH5A_1_8.f90 detected by 
            NAG compiler (MSB - 2008/7/29)
	- 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 - 2008/10/1)
	- 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 - 2008/9/3)
        - 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_REAL
           is DBLE_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 - 200/8/27)
        - Enable building shared library for fortran by adding the flag -fPIC 
          to the compile flags for versions of Intel Fortran compiler >=9
           (MSB  - 2008/8/26)

        C++ API
        ------
        - Fixed a design bug which allowed an Attribute object to create/modify
          attributes (bugzilla #1068).  The API class hierarchy was revised
          to address the problem.  Classes AbstractDS and Attribute are moved
          out of H5Object.  Class Attribute now multiply inherits from
          IdComponent and AbstractDs and class DataSet from H5Object and
          AbstractDs.  In addition, the data member IdComponent::id was
          moved into subclasses: Attribute, DataSet, DataSpace, DataType,
          H5File, Group, and PropList. (BMR - 2008/05/20)
        - IdComponent::dereference was incorrect and replaced as described
          in "New Features" section.
          (BMR - 2008/10/29)


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

    AIX 5.3			  xlc 7.0.0.8
				  xlf 09.01.0000.0008
				  xlC 7.0.0.8
				  mpcc_r 7.0.0.8
				  mpxlf_r 09.01.0000.0008

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

    FreeBSD 6.3-STABLE i386       gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
    (duty)                        g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
                                  gcc 4.2.5 20080702
                                  g++ 4.2.5 20080702
                                  gfortran 4.2.5 20080702

    FreeBSD 6.3-STABLE amd64      gcc 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
    (liberty)                     g++ 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
                                  gcc 4.2.5 20080702
                                  g++ 4.2.5 20080702
                                  gfortran 4.2.5 20080702

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

    Linux 2.6.9-42.0.10.ELsmp #1  gcc (GCC) 3.4.6
    SMP i686 i386                 G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.92!) April 18 2007)
    (kagiso)                      PGI C, Fortran, C++ 7.2-1 32-bit
                                  Intel(R) C Compiler for 32-bit
                                      applications, Version 10.1
                                  Intel(R) C++ Compiler for 32-bit
                                      applications, Version 10.1
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler for 32-bit
                                      applications, Version 10.1
                                  Absoft 32-bit Fortran 95 10.0.4
                                  MPICH mpich-1.2.7 compiled with
                                  gcc 3.4.6 and G95  (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.92!)
                                  MPICH mpich2-1.0.6p1 compiled with
                                  gcc 3.4.6 and G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.92!)

    Linux 2.6.16.46-0.14-smp #1   Intel(R) C++ for Intel(R) EM64T 
    SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux          Ver.  10.1.013
    (smirom)                      Intel(R) Fortran Intel(R) EM64T 
                                  Ver.  10.1.013
                                  PGI C, Fortran, C++ Version 7.2-1
                                         for 64-bit target on x86-64
                                  MPICH mpich-1.2.7 compiled with
                                  gcc 4.1.2 and G95  (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.92!)
                                  MPICH mpich2-1.0.7 compiled with
                                  gcc 4.1.2 and G95 (GCC 4.0.3 (g95 0.92!)
                                  tested for both 32- and 64-bit binaries

    Linux 2.6.16.54-0.2.5 #1      Intel(R) C++ Version 10.1.017
    Altix SMP ia64                Intel(R) Fortran Itanium(R) Version 10.1.017
    (cobalt)                      SGI MPI 1.16

    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 2.6.9-42.0.10.EL_lustre-1.4.10.1smp
    (abe)                         Intel(R) C++ Version 10.0.026
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 10.0.026
                                  Open MPI 1.2.2
                                  MVAPICH2-0.9.8p28p2patched-intel-ofed-1.2
                                  compiled with icc v10.0.026 and 
                                  ifort 10.0.026

    IA-64 Linux 2.4.21-309.tg1 #1 SMP
        ia64                      gcc (GCC) 3.2.2
    (NCSA tg-login)               Intel(R) C++ Version 8.1.037
                                  Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Version 8.1.033
                                  mpich-gm-1.2.7p1..16-intel-8.1.037-r1

    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)

    Windows XP x64                Visual Studio 2005 w/ Intel Fortran 9.1

    Windows Vista                 Visual Studio 2005

    MAC OS  10.5.4 (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)
                                  Intel C, C++ and Fortran compilers 10.1
                                  

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
Solaris2.10 32-bit       n        y      n        y     y     y
Solaris2.10 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      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 10.5 Intel      n        y      n        y     y     y
AIX 5.3 32- and 64-bit   n        y      n        y     y     n
FreeBSD 6.3-STABLE 
32&64 bit                n        y      n        y     y     y
RedHat EL4       (3)  W  y(1)     y(10)  y(1)     y     y     y
RedHat EL4 Intel (3)  W  n        y      n        y     y     n
RedHat EL4 PGI   (3)  W  n        y      n        y     y     n
SuSe x86_64 gcc(3,12) W  y(2)     y(11)  y(2)     y     y     y
SuSe x86_64 Int(3,12) W  n        y(13)  n        y     y     n
SuSe x86_64 PGI(3,12) W  n        y(8)   n        y     y     y
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 32-bit       y       y         y         y        
Solaris2.10 64-bit       y       y         y         y        
IRIX64_6.5 32-bit        y       dna       y         y        
IRIX64_6.5 64-bit        y       y         n         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 10.5            y       n         y         n        
AIX 5.3 32- and 64-bit   n       n         n         n        
FreeBSD 6.2 32&64 bit    y       n         y         y        
RedHat EL4       (3)  W  y       y(10)     y         y        
RedHat EL4 Intel (3)  W  y       y         y         n        
RedHat EL4 PGI   (3)  W  y       y         y         n        
SuSe x86_64 GNU(3,12) W  y       y         y         y        
SuSe x86_64 Int(3,12) W  y       y         y         n        
SuSe x86_64 PGI(3,12) W  y       y         y         n        
Linux 2.4 SuSE        C
    ia64 C Intel (7)     y       y         y         n        
Linux 2.4 SGI Altix   C
    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

    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 tools/h5ls/testh5ls.sh and
  tools/h5copy/testh5copy.sh will fail some of its sub-tests. These sub-tests
  are expected to fail and should exit with a non-zero code but the yod
  command does not propagate the exit code of the executables. Yod always
  returns 0 if it can launch the executable.  The test suite shell expects
  a non-zero for this particular test, therefore it concludes the test has
  failed when it receives 0 from yod.  Skip all the "failing" test for now
  by changing them as following.

  ======== Original tools/h5ls/testh5ls.sh =========
  TOOLTEST tgroup-1.ls 1 -w80 -r -g tgroup.h5
  ======== Change to ===============================
  echo SKIP TOOLTEST tgroup-1.ls 1 -w80 -r -g tgroup.h5
  ==================================================

  ======== Original tools/h5copy/testh5copy.sh =========
  TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -v -s grp_dsets  -d grp_rename
  TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -v -s grp_dsets  -d /grp_rename/grp_dsets
  TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -vp -s /grp_dsets -d /E/F/grp_dsets
  TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -vp -s /grp_nested -d /G/H/grp_nested
  H5LSTEST $FILEOUT
  ======== Change to ===============================
  echo SKIP TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -v -s grp_dsets  -d grp_rename
  echo SKIP TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -v -s grp_dsets  -d /grp_rename/grp_dsets
  echo SKIP TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -vp -s /grp_dsets -d /E/F/grp_dsets
  echo SKIP TOOLTEST_FAIL -i $TESTFILE -o $FILEOUT -vp -s /grp_nested -d /G/H/grp_nested
  echo SKIP H5LSTEST $FILEOUT
  ==================================================
  AKC - 2008/11/10

* For Red Storm, a Cray XT3 system, the yod command sometimes gives the
  message,  "yod allocation delayed for node recovery".  This interferes with
  test suites that do not expect 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

* 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

* 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. 

* 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

* 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.

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

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