#1158: ExternalLibraries/HDF5 should change the defaults for HDF5_ENABLE_CXX and HDF5_ENABLE_FORTRAN to "no". ------------------------------------+--------------------------------------- Reporter: knarf | Owner: Type: defect | Status: confirmed Priority: minor | Milestone: Component: EinsteinToolkit thorn | Version: development version Resolution: | Keywords: ------------------------------------+---------------------------------------
Comment (by barry.wardell):
In my experience the C++ bindings are pretty worthless. The last time I checked they were barely maintained and hadn't been updated to take advantage of improvements from new releases. It is straightforward to use the C API in C++ code and I get the impression most people implement their own C++ wrapper on top of that rather than using the C++ bindings. Given this, and the fact that the C++ bindings are disabled by default in most distributions, plus the conflict with, e.g. parallel support, makes a strong case for not having them as a requirement.
It sounds like there is a stronger case for the fortran bindings. At the same time it seems unfortunate to require HDF5 to be built (since most system packages have not enabled Fortran bindings) when it's not required, just in case someone has a private thorn which uses the Fortran bindings.