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Hi Lou, > The HDF5 build failed on an out of memory error. I emailed hdf help about > the problem. > Is HDF5 necessary for me to read the IPCC CMIP3 data? This data was > generated well before netcdf4. Can I build netcdf4 without HDF5? Or would I > possibly be better off using netcdf3.6.3? Or what? Thanks for your help. You do not need HDF5 for the CMIP3 data. You can build netcdf4 without HDF5, and in fact that is the default if you do not include --enable-netcdf-4 as an argument to the configure script when you build from source. This would be about the same as building netcdf-3.6.3, which is entirely adequate for the CMIP3 data. At this point, the main benefits of netCDF-4 are performance benefits in writing new data. For reading existing netCDF data that was written before netCDF-4, there is no advantage to using netCDF-4. The original problem with the test program you were trying to build, simple_xy_wr.f90, is that it requires the Fortran-90 interface, which is not available in the Windows binary distribution you downloaded. You could still use that distribution if you want to build C, C++, or Fortran-77 programs. The situation with building the Fortran-90 interface for Windows is a problem we have not solved, as we say in the answer to the FAQ: Note that we have not ported the F90 or C++ APIs to the Windows platform, only the C and F77 APIs. User contributions of ports to F90 windows compilers are very welcome (send them to address@hidden). http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/faq.html#windows Another developer has instructions for building a Fortran-90 interface for Windows here with Compaq Fortran: http://wiki.nesc.ac.uk/read/glimmer-project?InstallWindows and another user reported success with use of the ifort compiler here: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/other-builds.html#windows_ifort_f90 where some prebuilt binaries were available. --Russ Russ Rew UCAR Unidata Program address@hidden http://www.unidata.ucar.edu Ticket Details =================== Ticket ID: TYX-942858 Department: Support netCDF Priority: Normal Status: Closed