cannot compile with hdf5

[Ivan Sutoris]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Petr Mikulik <mikulik at physics.muni.cz> wrote:
>> > | I propose to put a test into configure. Once that somebody updates the API,
>> > | he can easily change the test condition towards newer version.
>> >
>> > I think it would be best to avoid version tests in the configure
>> > script.
>>
>> I agree in general, but given that the version 1.8 becomes
>> increasingly common and we need 1.6, maybe a building user should at
>> least get an informative warning somewhere? Otherwise, we will
>> probably see a number of complaints for failing builds.
>
> I agree. The "make" breaks compiling so the first thing the users tries to
> do is to search for a newer version of hdf5 and recompile Octave again...
>
> ---
> PM

I've had similar problem recently, and after bit of searching I've
found that possible workaround for compiling with HDF 1.8 is to
specify a compatibility flag:
  ./configure CPPFLAGS="-DH5_USE_16_API"
This has also been already mentioned before in Octave lists [1],[2].
Since Octave supports only older interface to HDF, maybe it would be
better to always define this flag in configure script?

[1] http://www.nabble.com/Installation-compilation-error-td21122108.html
[2] http://www.nabble.com/Build-Octave-3.0.0-with-HDF5-1.8.0-td16517191.html#a16521995

Regards
Ivan Sutoris