HDF5 version 2.0.0 currently under development

HPC configure/build/test results

Please refer to the release_docs/INSTALL file for installation instructions.

This repository contains a high-performance library's source code and a file format specification that implements the HDF5® data model. The model has been adopted across many industries, and this implementation has become a de facto data management standard in science, engineering, and research communities worldwide.

The HDF Group is the developer, maintainer, and steward of HDF5 software. Find more information about The HDF Group, the HDF5 Community, and other HDF5 software projects, tools, and services at The HDF Group's website.

DOCUMENTATION

Documentation for all HDF software is available at:

https://support.hdfgroup.org/documentation/index.html

Documentation for the current HDF5 library release is available at:

https://support.hdfgroup.org/releases/hdf5/latest-docs.html

The latest Doxygen documentation generated on changes to develop, which does not correspond to any particular library release, is available at:

https://hdfgroup.github.io/hdf5/develop

See the RELEASE.txt file in the release_docs/ directory for information specific to the features and updates included in this release of the library.

Several more files are located within the release_docs/ directory with specific details for several common platforms and configurations.

INSTALL - Start Here. General instructions for compiling and installing the library
INSTALL_CMAKE  - instructions for building with CMake (Kitware.com)
INSTALL_parallel - instructions for building and configuring Parallel HDF5
INSTALL_Windows and INSTALL_Cygwin - MS Windows installations.

HELP AND SUPPORT

Information regarding Help Desk and Support services is available at

https://help.hdfgroup.org

FORUM and NEWS

The HDF Forum is provided for public announcements and discussions of interest to the general HDF5 Community.

• News and Announcements https://forum.hdfgroup.org/c/news-and-announcements-from-the-hdf-group

• HDF5 Topics https://forum.hdfgroup.org/c/hdf5

These forums are provided as an open and public service for searching and reading. Posting requires completing a simple registration and allows one to join in the conversation. Please read the instructions pertaining to the Forum's use and configuration.

RELEASE SCHEDULE

HDF5 does not release on a regular schedule. Instead, releases are driven by new features and bug fixes, though we try to have at least one release of each maintenance branch per year. Future HDF5 releases indicated on this schedule are tentative.

Release	New Features
2.0.0	Drop Autotools support, drop the HDF5 <--> GIF tools, add complex number support, update library defaults (cache sizes, etc.), use semantic versioning
FUTURE	Multi-threaded HDF5, crashproofing / metadata journaling, Full (VFD) SWMR, encryption, digital signatures, sparse datasets, improved storage for variable-length datatypes, better Unicode support (especially on Windows)

NOTE: In the March 2025 release we will begin using semantic versioning (https://semver.org/) and the previously announced 1.16.0 version will instead be numbered 2.0.0.

A list of planned HDF5 2.0 features and bugfixes can be found here.

This list of feature release versions is also tentative, and the specific release in which a feature is introduced may change.

SNAPSHOTS, PREVIOUS RELEASES AND SOURCE CODE

Periodically development code snapshots are provided at the following URL:

https://github.com/HDFGroup/hdf5/releases/tag/snapshot

Source packages for current and previous releases are located at:

hdf5 1.14 releases: https://support.hdfgroup.org/releases/hdf5/v1_14/index.html

Archived releases: https://support.hdfgroup.org/archive/support/ftp/HDF5/releases/index.html

Development code is available at our Github location:

https://github.com/HDFGroup/hdf5.git