        Building and Installation Instructions for Alpha Open VMS
                              HDF5 1.8.12 release
                               18 September 2013
   


        CONTENTS
        --------
                
        1. Obtaining HDF5
        2. Building and Testing HDF5 C, Fortran, and C++ Libraries
           and Utilities
        3. Installing HDF5 Libraries
        4. Known Problems


    1. Obtaining HDF5

       Please see the INSTALL file in this directory for downloading 
       instructions.

    2. Building and Testing HDF5 C, Fortran, and C++ Libraries and Utilities

           IMPORTANT: This version REQUIRES GNU ZLIB library to be installed
                      on a system. You may download the source code from
                      http://www.zlib.net/

                      The newest ZLIB 1.2.8 does not work properly on OpenVMS, 
                      but ZLIB 1.2.5 works fine.

    -  Use the tar command to untar HDF5 source ball

       tar -xvf <source>.tar

    -  Change the default directory to [.<source>.vms]
         -  Specify the top HDF5 source directory in the build.com file where 
            "hdf5top" is defined.
         -  Edit make.com:
                - Specify the path to the ZLIB library
                - If necessary, modify the compilation flags 
        Do NOT REMOVE the /define=H5_VMS and /standard=strict_ansi qualifiers.
         -  Run the build.com command file 
         
        @build
        
            We recommend using a batch queue to build and test this 
            distribution. 
            
            The command file runs make.com and builds the C library, tests, 
            and utilities, the Fortran library and tests, and the C++ 
            library and tests. It also runs test scripts to test C, Fortran, 
            and C++ libraries, and the h5dump, h5diff, h5ls, and h5repack 
            utilities.

    3. Installing HDF5 Libraries

       Modify the install.com file to specify the installation directory 
       (hdf5top) and run
       
        @install
        
        to install HDF5 C, Fortran, and C++ libraries, and utilities.
        
        The script will create the directories shown below in the
        installation directory:

           [.HDF5]...
           [.HDF5.INCLUDE]
           [.HDF5.LIB]
           [.HDF5.BIN]
           [.HDF5.EXAMPLES]
           [.HDF5.EXAMPLES.C]
           [.HDF5.EXAMPLES.F90]
           [.HDF5.EXAMPLES.CXX]

           [.HDF5.EXAMPLES.*] directories contain make.com and check.com files 
           to build examples against the installed libraries and to verify 
           the installation.

	4. Known Problems

           - There is no support for the szip compression filter.
           - Two soft conversion functions (H5T__conv_i_f and H5T__conv_f_i)
             have bugs.  They convert data between floating-point numbers and 
             integers, but the library's default is hard conversion.  The user 
             should avoid explicitly enabling soft conversion between 
             floating-point numbers and integers. 

    For help, contact help@hdfgroup.org.
