HDF5 Build/Install/Use on Windows 10 with MinGW

This repo describes our recent experience with HDF5 library for C++ on Windows 10 built with MinGW. To make the use of HDF5 library with C/C++ more convenient, we selected the HighFive - Header-only C++ HDF5 interface.

We assume that MinGW and CMake have been installed and (bin directories) added to the PATH environment, because the their installations are GUI-based, thus quite straightforward.

Install HDF5 library

• Download the source code: CMake-hdf5-1.10.5.zip
• Decompress it
• Goto the root directory (CMake-hdf5-1.10.5 if you do not change the name) and then open PowerShell there tying the following commends (DONOT TRY THEM BEFORE READING KNOWN ISSUES IN THE NEXT SECTION):

  md build
  cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Release -DHDF5_BUILD_FORTRAN:BOOL=OFF -DHDF5_BUILD_JAVA:BOOL=OFF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=\path\to\install\HDF5 DHDF5_ENABLE_SZIP_SUPPORT:BOOL=OFF -DHDF5_ENABLE_Z_LIB_SUPPORT:BOOL=OFF  -DBUILD_TESTING:BOOL=ON -DHDF5_BUILD_TOOLS:BOOL=ON ..\hdf5-1.10.5
  mingw32-make
  mingw32-make test
  mingw32-make install

The following gives a summary of our test results. Unfortunately, we have 6 tests failed. In the future, we will try to find the reason(s) and fix them. ```bash 99% tests passed, 8 tests failed out of 2562

Total Test time (real) = 857.96 sec

The following tests FAILED:
         68 - H5TEST-shared-cache_api (Failed)
         84 - H5TEST-shared-dt_arith (Failed)
        143 - H5TEST-shared-err_compat (Failed)
        145 - H5TEST-shared-error_test (Failed)
        313 - H5DIFF-h5diff_101 (Failed)
        315 - H5DIFF-h5diff_102 (Failed)
        317 - H5DIFF-h5diff_103 (Failed)
        319 - H5DIFF-h5diff_104 (Failed)
```

Known Issues

• The well-known problem with empty args for variadic macros in C99
  • GCC's ## trick: Change __VA_ARGS__ to ##__VA_ARGS__ in Make-hdf5-1.10.5\hdf5-1.10.5\src\H5win32defs.h

Use HDF5 library with Highfive Interface

We also provide you a sample code for using HDF5 library with Highfive Interface, the course codes for the example are copied from HighFive. Although HDF5 provides cmake module for enabling find_package to work with it, we failed to figure out how to make it work correctly. It either finds the wrong libraries (when not providing COMPONENTS) or can not find the libraries (when providing COMPONENTS).

Notice

If you have visual studio then you are highly suggested to use it. Of course, you can also download the pre-built binary to avoid the building process.