HDF5 for Debian
---------------

Some general notes for developers: since 1.8 series HDF Group deprecates 
enabling the thread-safe option for the C library and at the same time
supporting C++ and Fortran bindings. Those options cannot cohexist for
safety because non C libraries wrapper are not thread-aware. 
Debian GNU/Linux still support a C thread-safe library and the alternative
bindings, but it does not imply that the Debian distributed C++ and Fortran
are thread-safe. 

For short: DO NOT use C++ or Fortran bindings in multi-thread programs
witihout providing yourself mutex infrastructure support for every wrapped 
function. You can use safely only the C binding in a multi-thread environment.
That was not different in 1.6 series, just the issue was ignored.

Now, you are warned. 

 -- Francesco Paolo Lovergine <frankie@debian.org> Fri Jun 19 22:09:25 CEST 2009
