HDF 4.2r0 Known Problems and Workarounds

Windows: Can't Build Multithreaded HDF4 Library without SZIP

To build HDF4 without the SZIP library, the instructions specify to comment out the following line in h4config.h:

  #define H4_HAVE_LIBSZ 1

However, this fails, trying to open 'szlib.lib'.

The solution is to not only comment out the above line but to comment out an additional line:

 #define H4_HAVE_SZLIB_H 1
 #define H4_HAVE_LIBSZ 1

If you wish to test the HDF4 tools, you will also need to remove szlib.lib from the external libraries linked from the ALL project in the project settings.

Shared Libraries

With HDF 4.2r0, you cannot build shared libraries. We are working on this.

Problem with Reading SZIP Compressed Datasets

There are numerous problems with SZIP in HDF 4.2r0. We recommend that you not use it at this time. We are addressing these problems with the next release of HDF4.2, due out in the first quarter of 2005.

Linux Fedora

HDF 4.2r0 was not tested on Linux Fedora. Although users have been able to build at least the C library on Linux Fedora, some problems have been encountered. Here are comments reported by users:

Shared Object Library Linkage Problem with Szip. For Linux, the search path is determined from /etc/ld.so.conf. Add the path to the shared object library (lisbsz.0.1 in this case) and then run /sbin/ldconfig. Also, be sure to add -lsz to the compilation string. Exporting LD_LIBRARY_PATH with the shared object library path does not fix the problem.
Undefined Reference __ctype_b, Using the Pre-compiled Binaries. This error occurs because the libraries were built with different versions of compilers. Build all libraries (HDF, jpeg, zlib, szip) from source using your compiler.
Some of utility comparisons may fail, when building and running tests from source. Run the specific tests manually and compare results.

Known Problems at Release Time

Known Problems with HDF 4.1r5

- - Last modified:June 25th 2007