EAO are currently putting together a new release of the Starlink
software collection. The most significant change is that HDS files
(such as NDFs, parameter files, graphics databases, etc) can now be
stored on disk using the HDF5 format - see portal.hdfgroup.org. The
new release will default to creating HDS files using the classic
Starlink disk format. To use HDF5 instead, do:
% setenv HDS_VERSION 5 (tcsh)
% export HDS_VERSION=5 (bash)
The files will still end with ".sdf" regardless of the disk format in
use. All software in the new release should read either format.
It is planned that the default will be changed in a subsequent release
so that new files are created using HDF5. It is expected that by that
time, the majority of users will have installed the upcoming release
and so be able to read NDFs stored in HDF5 format.
The nightly builds created at EAO already contains the new HDS
features and can be rsynced from
http://starlink.eao.hawaii.edu/starlink/rsyncStarlink. If anyone feels
interested in testing the new features, please do so and let us know
of any issues you come across.
In case you are wondering, the main motivation for this change is two-fold:
1) Provide better support for humongous array sizes.
2) To reduce the maintenance problems associated with classic HDS.
For more detailed information see TIm's A&C paper "Reimplementing the
Hierarchical Data System using HDF5"
(https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.04029).
David Berry
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