Important Differences between HDF5 1.8 and 1.10

The highlights can be found here.

This page only deals with the ".NET fallout."

API Changes

With the exception of the functions related to (MPI-parallel) collective metadata I/O, all new APIs have been added to HDF.PInvoke, and appropriate unit tests defined. The underlying HDF5 1.10 features (SWMR, VDS, etc.) were tested primarily on UNIX/Linux systems. Testing on Windows has not been nearly as complete, and there might be issues yet unknown.

Types

Depending on how you've maintained your code, the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit handles (or identifiers) might catch you off-guard:

Feature	HDF5 1.8	HDF5 1.10
hid_t	System.Int32	System.Int64

If you've hard-coded System.Int32 in places where an hid_t was asked for, you might be in trouble. A relatively safe method to deal with this change is 1) to use HDF5 API type names in your code, and 2) to begin every source file with a declaration similar to this:

#if HDF5_VER1_10
using hid_t = System.Int64;
#else
using hid_t = System.Int32;
#endif

Unfortunately, declarations like this interfere with IntelliSense.

Let us know, if you've come up with a more elegant solution!