[Kst] NetCDF packages

[Nicolas Brisset]

Hi Christian/Jan,

You may have seen on the Kst list that we're trying to get NetCDF-4 to work better, which requires to compile NetCDF it with HDF5 support.
Under Linux, at least on OpenSuse, apparently there is HDF5 support. However, I tried to work with one file making use of newer NetCDF-4 features and I noticed that the C++ wrapper we use is obsolete. 
Apparently, since version 4.2 the C++ library has been improved by Lynton Appel (which I'm putting in CC in case he has news from the packaging front) and split out of the base package, see http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/netcdf/netcdf-cxx/index.jsp and http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/cxx4/

Questions:
1) do you know who's maintaining the NetCDF packages?
2) do you think it would be an issue to update to this new wrapper?
3) if it's feasible, how can we best phase the changes so that we don't end up with a version with reduced support for NetCDF-4?

I hope the questions are clear, otherwise don't hesitate to ask for clarifications!

Thanks for your help,

Nicolas