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  Addition of optional netCDF functionality on rasdaman
  Author: Bihemo Kimasa
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1. Making netCDF optional for installing rasdaman

  Rasdman now allows the inclusion of netCDF libraries 
  when installing. 

  A new functionality --with-netcdf that can be
  passed when configuring rasdaman has been added. The
  functionality works by checking whether libnetcdf.a. 
  If these libraries are found a new variable HAVE_NETCDF 
  with value 1 is passed to the compiler which can be fetched 
  for use in appropriate files. An error message is printed 
  otherwise.

  If the user choses to configure rasdaman without invoking
  --with-netcdf functionality, rasdaman will try to configure 
  without them and won't bother to search for them.
  
  Since netCDF support hdf libraries, I would recommend that 
  when installing the libraries, the user should disable hdf5 
  libraries for rasdaman currently supports hdf4 libraries only. 
  This is also safe for the case that the user has not installed 
  hdf4 libraries. Otherwise you would need to install hdf5, but 
  I don't know what would be outcome. Just stick with hdf4.

  The following is the piece of code that has been added in 
  the configure.ac script. It should be easy to find it.

  AC_ARG_WITH([netcdf],
	    [AS_HELP_STRING([--with-netcdf],
	      [this feature looks whether libnetcdf libraries are installed.])],
	    [],
	    [with_netcdf=no])

  AC_MSG_NOTICE(checking for libnetcdf library...$with_hdf)

  if test "$with_netcdf" == yes; then
    AC_CHECK_LIB([netcdf], [main], ,[AC_MSG_FAILURE([--with-netcdf was given but libnetcdf.a was not found! Please install.])])
    AC_DEFINE([HAVE_NETCDF], [1])
  fi


  2. "How to install" instructionsftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/netcdf.tar.gz

  An updated list of packages needed should look like the following:

  Rasdaman requires a Linux kernel 2.6.18 or higher. Successful
  installations are reported for Kubuntu, SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake
  distributions. (Let us know about further ones!)

  Aside from the standard packages which should be available on any
  vanilla Linux, the following list has to be installed:

  
  -tools:
      git-core, make, autoconf, automake, libtool, gawk, flex, bison,
      ant, gcc-c++, libstdc++,  sun-java6-jdk,  Tomcat (or another suitable 
      servlet container).
  
  -general libraries:
      libreadline-dev, libopenssl-devel, libncurses5-dev database stuff:
      PostgreSQL 8.x,  libecpg-dev; Warning: do not use versions PG 8.3.0 
      to 8.3.6 inclusive, it won't work.
    
  -image formats:
      libtiff-dev, libjpeg-dev, libpng12-dev,  libnetpbm10-dev
  
  -Optionally, the performance boosters and additional service components 
    offered by  rasdaman GmbH can be installed. Also to use rasdaman you 
    will need to ensure that libhdf4g-dev (note the version) is installed. 
    If you like you can configure rasdaman with netCDF libraries. Get 
    this any recent version of it from the internet and install it 
    (e.g. ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/netcdf.tar.gz). Please be 
    sure to disable libhdf5 when using netCDF. It may produce nasty things. 
  
