Bug#853750: hdfview: HDF5 files appear empty

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Package: hdfview
Version: 2.11.0+dfsg-2+b1
Severity: important

The current version of hdfview does not show the content of any of my
HDF5 files.

Downgrading to the 2.9-3+b2 version of libjhdf{4,5}-{java, jni}, which
also installs libhdf5-8 version 1.8.13+docs-15, seems to fix the issue
for me, even if hdfview is kept at the 2.11 version. This seems to
suggest that the problem lies in libjhdf rather than in hdfview itself,
and/or in the API of libhdf5 used by jhdf.

FWIW, a similar bug seems to affect also jhdf 2.9-5 as found in Ubuntu,
which is using libhdf5-10 (1.8.16), which would further support the idea
of a breaking API change between version 1.8.13 and 1.8.16 of libhdf5.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages hdfview depends on:
ii  default-jre     2:1.8-58
ii  java-wrappers   0.1.28
ii  libjgraph-java  5.12.4.2+dfsg-5
ii  libjhdf4-java   2.11.0+dfsg-2+b1
ii  libjhdf5-java   2.11.0+dfsg-2+b1
ii  libslf4j-java   1.7.22-1

hdfview recommends no packages.

Versions of packages hdfview suggests:
ii  chromium [www-browser]          55.0.2883.75-6
ii  dillo [www-browser]             3.0.5-3
ii  elinks [www-browser]            0.12~pre6-12
ii  firefox [www-browser]           51.0-1
ii  iceape [www-browser]            2.7.12-1+b1
ii  konqueror [www-browser]         4:16.08.3-1
ii  links2 [www-browser]            2.14-2
ii  lynx [www-browser]              2.8.9dev11-1
ii  netsurf-fb [www-browser]        3.6-3
ii  opera [www-browser]             12.16.1860
ii  surf [www-browser]              0.7-2
ii  vivaldi-snapshot [www-browser]  1.7.735.11-1
ii  w3m [www-browser]               0.5.3-34

-- no debconf information