Parallel-NetCDF 1.0.0 pre-release

[Robert Latham]

Hi Rene.  Thanks for the report about the issues.  

On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 10:41:50AM +0200, Rene Redler wrote:
> When trying to run this we encounter some (minor) problems.
> 
> 1.) nfmpi_inq_libvers is missing in the Fortran interface

We have a script that generate our Fortran interface from the C
interface.  Our script must have missed ncmpi_inq_libvers.  It is
the only ncmpi_* routine that returns char * instead of int.  

> 2.) nfmpi_set_fill is not implemented

You caught us there.  In a parallel implementation of netcdf, it is
very difficult to implement anything other than NC_NOFILL efficently.
We should probably implement the routine for parity with serial
netcdf, and return with an error if anything besides NC_NOFILL is
unsupported

> 3.) nfmpi_def_dim required the input length to be declared as
>     integer(kind=MPI_OFFSET_KIND)

This is a relatively recent change so that we could better handle
large files.  We need to better document our approach for handling 64
bit parameters

> 4.) NF_UNLIMITED, often used as input parameter to nfmpi_def_dim
>     is only declared as default integer, typically different from
>     MPI_OFFSET_KIND. Using NF_UNLIMITED causes nfmpi_def_dim
>     to return an error.

Thanks for catching that.

> 5.) Our file names contain the time in a format hh:mm:ss . These
>     colons are misinterpreted by pnetcdf. Apparently you use the
>     colon to look after information concerning the file system.

We pass the file name down to ROMIO, which, if one is given,  uses a
prefix to determine the file system type.  Typically that would be
something like "pvfs2:testfile" or "nfs:/path/to/data".  One way
around that is to provide the file system prefix in addition to your
timestamp.  So if your file is "10:32:43.data", using
"<FSTYPE>:10:32:43.data" should make everything happy.  Again, this
needs to be better documented.  

> Some hints for the installation of Parallel-NetCDF 1.0.0 under
> Suse Linux.
> 
> yacc and lex are not included in the standard installation.
> To have yacc available the bison package is required. To have
> lex available the flex package must be installed.

We'll add this to the documentation

Thanks for giving our software such a thourough examination.  I think
we can address most if not all of these before we release 1.0

==rob

-- 
Rob Latham
Mathematics and Computer Science Division    A215 0178 EA2D B059 8CDF
Argonne National Labs, IL USA                B29D F333 664A 4280 315B