DAL/KnownIssues at master · nextgen-astrodata/DAL · GitHub

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Data Access Library (DAL) - KnownIssues
=======================================

KI 1: DAL changes the current working directory (cwd) in some cases
Description: When opening a HDF5 file in another directory and that HDF5 file has data sets stored in external
  files, then DAL changes the cwd to the HDF5 file and back around every access to an external data file. Else,
  HDF5 will report an error; DAL works around this. This always uses one extra file descriptor per opened file.
  Note that DAL uses fchdir(), such that users can change the cwd after HDF5 files have been opened. When DAL
  changes the cwd, it tries to set it back (needs another file descriptor (temp)), but this may fail.
Workaround: Change the cwd yourself to always open the HDF5 file from the cwd (no extra file descriptor used and
  DAL does not touch the cwd). In that case, the cwd needs to be the same when accessing external data sets.
Status: The underlying HDF5 issue has been reported to the HDF Group. We don't know how to work around it better.

KI 2: No support for Windows
Description: DAL does not build/run under Windows.
Workaround: None (use Linux or Mac OS).
Status: As long as radio astronomers don't use Windows, won't fix.

KI 3: Long build time of Python bindings (DALPYTHON_wrap.cxx)
Description: Compiling DALPYTHON_wrap.cxx can take a while, but on older GCC versions (e.g. 4.2.1) with the default
  build type ('RelWithDebInfo') it can take many minutes. Note that if you do a parallel build, it may appear to
  "hang" on another file, but building DALPYTHON_wrap.cxx is just not done yet.
Workaround: Build in Debug mode (without optimizations) by passing '-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug' to cmake, or
  upgrade your GCC version, or build with clang/llvm (last time we checked, 3.0 worked, 2.0 did not).
  If you don't need Python bindings, turn them off by passing '-DPYTHON_BINDINGS=OFF' to cmake.
Status: Won't fix. We don't know how to reduce SWIG's output, nor do we want to build in Debug mode by default.

KI 4: 'make uninstall' leaves empty installation directories behind
Description: The uninstall script removes all installed files. It also removes runtime generated .pyc files.
  It does not remove created directories, even if empty.
  These are: $PREFIX/share/doc/dal $PREFIX/include/dal $PYTHON_PREFIX/dist-packages/DAL and subdirectories.
  Parent directories may also have been created and not removed.
Workaround: Remove them by hand.
Status: Low priority. Already spent time to remove .pyc files. This will not be worked on any time soon.

KI 5: No support for Python 3
Description: The build system does not support Python 3, whether 2 and 3 are installed or only 3.
  This used to work after it was fixed in LDA, even if 2 and 3 were both installed, but is now unsupported again.
  Note that the LOFAR software does not support Python 3 either.
Workaround: Use Python 2.6 or 2.7.
Status: Low priority. This will not be worked on any time soon.