Re: application of netcdf in LATS

Hi Mike,

> We are putting together a grid output library for AMIP II (see
> http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/amip2/lats/latsintro.html and
> http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/amiphome.html) that can output both GRIB
> and/or netCDF.
> 
> While we could require users of the netCDF option (I wrote the GRIB
> part) get (or make) your library, and then link to it when making LATS
> applications, my experience is that only half of the target platforms
> have netcdf available and in one case the library was so old LATS
> failed.
> 
> In my mind, a better solution is to include the netcdf library (official
> release 2.4.3) in LATS.  Specifically, the one we used in testing (BTW,
> I made netcdf and successfully tested it on an SGI IRIX 4.0 platform and
> an IBM RS6000 AIX3.0).  The benefit of such an approach is that the user
> does not have to worry about dealing with the netcdf libraries if they
> want to try the netcdf option and, more importantly to us, all netcdf
> output from LATS would come from the same routines.  The downside is
> that a user could not link to his favorite version, although they could
> rip out the netcdf .o files from our library.
> 
> I have two questions.  The first is whether bundling netCDF in our
> library is acceptable to you given, of course, that we would acknowledge
> UNIDATA and point to your docs.  The second is whether you think we
> should bind netCDF inside our library or keep it outside.

Yes, bundling the netCDF in your library is acceptable to us.  When we
have released netCDF 3 and stopped supporting netCDF 2.4, we'd like to
have you use the newer version, which is backward-compatible with netCDF
2 in that it uses the some format and supports all the netCDF 2
interfaces.  But we will probably support netCDF 2 for at least the next
six months ...

It's OK to bind netCDF inside your library, but you may also want to
bind the udunits library, which is often used with netCDF to support the
"units" attribute.  That would make your release self-contained.  On the
other hand, if your conventions don't require using the units attribute
or use a different library, you could leave it out.

udunits is available from www.unidata.ucar.edu.

Thanks for your efforts in supporting netCDF with LATS!

--Russ

_____________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu