UTF-8 unusable on windows with 1.14.4 - 1.14.5

[hmaarrfk]

Solution to issue cannot be found in the documentation.

• I checked the documentation.

Issue

See HDFGroup/hdf5#5037 for more details but basically:

1. A patch in 1.14.4 broke UTF-8 filename support on windows.
2. This is blocking h5py from being compiled on windows.

I personally think UTF-8 is pretty important. I've seen users assume they can put any character they want (commas, quotes, colons, you name it.....) in their file names.

However, today HDF5 is splitting the conda ecosystem making it more difficult to co-install packages.

I think there are a few options for conda-forge:

1. Downgrade to 1.14.3
2. Dual build: 1.14.3 + 1.14.4 (heavy maintenance downstream)
3. Ship 1.14.4 and say it is a known issue (h5py's pypi package might do this)
4. Revert the offending patch on our version 1.14.4 Address code page issues w/ Windows file paths HDFGroup/hdf5#4172

I'm not sure what other maintainers have in mind, but it would be good to get to a decision and to unblock this by the end of the week.

Installed packages

hdf5 1.14.4 and 1.14.5

Environment info

Windows.

[hmaarrfk]

I would like to move forward with Option 2:

• Dual build 1.14.3 and 1.14.4/5/6

while this gets resolved upstream.

This isn't too different than what we've done in the past with HDF5 updates. HDF5 updates often take time, and the libraries that consume them can be quite old (due to the strong history of HDF5) and makes it difficult for packages to migrate.

I feel like 1.14.4/5 is actually quite disruptive to the ecosystem as a whole, while the UTF-8 issue isn't resolved.

Thoughts are welcome.

I've rebuilt 1.14.3 with the new features that have been contributed.

If an other maintainer agrees I have a checklist of the next steps outlined in #241 Perhaps the person who agrees can start by creating the new branch.

[hmaarrfk]

Ok i've waited two weeks with little response so I'm going to make use of my merge powers to push the idea of dual builds through until somebody else can propose a better alternative.

However, given the importance of HDF5 beyond just the conda(-forge) ecosystem, I think we should avoid patching this bug out.

[hmaarrfk]

@conda-forge-admin please rerender

so as to add a sacred branch

[conda-forge-webservices]

Hi! This is the friendly automated conda-forge-webservice.

I just wanted to let you know that I started rerendering the recipe in #242.