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Got HDF5?

Visualization of an HDF5 file
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Building HDF5

Configuring the Software

The following environment variables can be used to override the choices used by autotools or CMake. These can be seen by typing ./configure -help from the top directory of the HDF5 source code.

Environment Variable Description
CC C compiler command
CFLAGS C compiler flags
LDFLAGS linker flags, e.g. -L if you have libraries in a nonstandard directory
LIBS libraries to pass to the linker, e.g. -l
CPPFLAGS (Objective) C/C++ preprocessor flags, e.g. -I if you have headers in a nonstandard directory
CPP C preprocessor
FC Fortran compiler command
FCFLAGS Fortran compiler flags
CXX C++ compiler command
CXXFLAGS C++ compiler flags
CXXCPP C++ preprocessor
LT_SYS_LIBRARY_PATH User-defined run-time library search path

Ignoring errors when building the tests

You can set the environment variable HDF5_Make_Ignore to tell the hdf5 Makefile to ignore test errors and continue on. For example:

env HDF5_Make_Ignore=yes gmake check

File locking

A configure option is available to disable file locking:

-disable-libtool-lock

You can also set the HDF5_USE_FILE_LOCKING environment variable to FALSE to disable file locking.

Parallel HDF5

There are environment variables (for example, RUNPARALLEL and RUNSERIAL) that can be used when building Parallel HDF5. See the release_docs/INSTALL_parallel file in the HDF5 source code for further details.

Using HDF5 and HDF5 Tools

Adjusting the h5repack buffer size

If encountering poor performance using h5repack with large datasets, the H5TOOLS_BUFSIZE environment variable can be used to improve performance. This environment variable specifies the hyperslab (selection) buffer size (in bytes) that is used by h5repack.

Dynamic Filter Plugins

The Registered Filter Plugins are (compression) filters that users have created and contributed, and which have been registered with The HDF Group. The plugins depend on the environment variable, HDF5_PLUGIN_PATH.