Re: netCDF 3.5.0 vs 3.5.1-beta

Mary,

> I just recently built netCDF 3.5.0 on seven different types of systems
> at NCAR, and was getting ready to announce it to the users so they
> could begin testing it.  As you probably saw, Charlie Zender found a
> problem with one of the include files in my test installations, which
> you guys fixed in 3.5.1-beta.  Charlie is asking me to bag 3.5.0 and
> install 3.5.1-beta instead, but I wanted to check with you first.
> 
> Is 3.5.1-beta a stable version, or should I stay with 3.5.0?  Charlie
> thinks he may have found a problem with 3.5.0 on prospect (Compaq
> Alpha), so if you think 3.5.1-beta is the way to go, I may wait until
> this problem is fixed as well.

3.5.1-beta is stable as far as features and functionality are
concerned; it is just meant to fix some known problems with 3.5.0
described at:

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/known_problems.html

The remaining work for 3.5.1 is just handling problems with building
netCDF from source, such as making sure the C++ interface compiles on
various C++ compilers.

If most of your users will be using installed binaries and installed
libraries, then you don't care much about these portability issues and
can make whatever tweaks are necessary to the source to make it
compile and have the tests run on each platform.  In particular, you
don't need to worry about whether the sources compile using cc vs gcc
or f77 vs g77, for example; as long as you can find one environment
under which the sources can be built and installed on each platform,
that's sufficient.  We just have to worry about those portability
issues before we can make 3.5.1.

Something else that might influence your decision is when 3.5.1 will
be released.  I'm not sure, but I'm hoping for getting it out in about
a month.  Nobody is actively working on it now, but we are set up to
do the necessary testing soon.

--Russ