Update of HDF5 and hdfview in Bionic

[Markus Johann Schmidt]

Dear all,

I would like to discuss the update of the HDF5 libraries and the HDF Viewer in Bionic.

1) Justification for update of HDF5 libraries
To my understanding, the libraries in Bionic are provided in version 1.10.3. The HDF group though discourages the use of version before 1.10.3

Quote from Barbara Jones (HDF Group):

	My understanding is that Ubuntu may also ship with an early version of HDF5-1.10, as well. Users should not use versions of HDF5-1.10 prior to HDF5-1.10.3. See this page for details:
	https://portal.hdfgroup.org/display/HDF5/Software+Changes+from+Release+to+Release+for+HDF5-1.10

Recent Ubuntu releases (starting with disco) provide the version 1.10.4. Perhaps it is possible to backport them for bionic?


2) Upgrade of HDFView
The provided version of HDFview in 2.11 is an old one. More severe, it is not compatible with the HDF5 libraries version 1.10. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/jhdf/+bug/1696456

Even though the problem comes from the upstream Debian repos, perhaps it is possible to upgrade the viewer to a compatible version (3+)? I try to get in contact with the Debian Science team to fix this problem upstream.

I hope to find a solution for the Bionic LTS release, since we depend on the package at our institute and perhaps other scientists might find it important to have a compatible and working version of the software.

Best regards
Markus

-- 
ETH Zurich
Markus Schmidt
Institute of Fluid Dynamics
ML H54
Sonneggstrasse 3
8092 Zurich, Switzerland

Phone +41 44 632 61 03
Fax +41 44 632 11 47
schmidt­@ifd.mavt.ethz.ch
www.ifd.mavt.ethz.ch