I'm in favor of requiring >=1.8.0. Hapla Vaclav via petsc-dev <petsc-dev@mcs.anl.gov> writes:
> I wanted to add support for HDF5 attributes of groups (currently only > datasets). > > But I already feel like held back by supporting HDF5 older than 1.8.0. Do we > still need that? > > My arguments to get rid of that support: > 1) It seems we already use some 1.8.0+ functions anyway (might be my fault, > though). > 2) We could get rid of all those #if > 3) There were quite some useful API functions introduced in that release > which would make the code simpler. For instance, H5O* functions allow > handling groups and datasets the same way. > > Ad 2,3 consider this > > /* OLD */ > #if (H5_VERS_MAJOR * 10000 + H5_VERS_MINOR * 100 + H5_VERS_RELEASE >= 10800) > if (dataset) { > PetscStackCallHDF5Return(object, H5Dopen2, (h5, parent, H5P_DEFAULT)); > } else if (type == H5O_TYPE_GROUP) { > PetscStackCallHDF5Return(object, H5Gopen2, (h5, parent, H5P_DEFAULT)); > } > #else > if (dataset) { > PetscStackCallHDF5Return(object, H5Dopen, (h5, parent)); > } else if (type == H5O_TYPE_GROUP) { > PetscStackCallHDF5Return(object, H5Gopen, (h5, parent)); > } > #endif > ... > if (dataset) { > PetscStackCallHDF5Return(err, H5Dclose, (object)); > } else if (type == H5O_TYPE_GROUP) { > PetscStackCallHDF5Return(err, H5Gclose, (object)); > } > > > /* NEW */ > PetscStackCallHDF5Return(object, H5Oopen, (h5, parent, H5P_DEFAULT)); > ... > PetscStackCallHDF5Return(err, H5Oclose, (object)); > > > Additionally, function H5Oget_info() which can say whether the object is > group or dataset was also introduced only in 1.8.0. So the dataset flag above > would have to be set by a user it seems... > > So I personally think it's already about time to leave the old HDF5 API > behind... Objections? If no, I would make a PR which would clean the code > from the #ifs and forbid the older versions already in configure. > > Vaclav