MATIO - MATLAB MAT file I/O library

Table of Contents
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1.0 Introduction
  1.1 Contact
  1.2 Acknowledgements
  1.3 Contributing
  1.4 Questions and Reporting Bugs
2.0 Building
  2.1 Dependencies
    2.1.1 zlib
    2.1.2 HDF-5
  2.2 Building matio
    2.2.1 Quick Build Guide
    2.2.2 Configure Options
    2.2.3 Visual Studio
    2.2.4 Testsuite
  2.3 Platforms
3.0 License

1.0 Introduction
    matio is an open-source library for reading/writing MATLAB MAT files.
    This library is designed for use by programs/libraries that do not have
    access or do not want to rely on MATLAB's shared library.

    1.1 Contact
        You can contact me (Christopher Hulbert) through email at
        chulbe2lsu@users.sourceforge.net.

    1.2 Acknowledgements
        The following people/organizations have helped in the development of
        matio through patches, bug reports, and/or testing:
          * Jacco van Beek
          * SGI in support of Interactive Supercomputing, Inc.
          * Scilab (http://www.scilab.org/)
          * Steven Leibman <sleibman@alum.mit.edu>
          * OpenMEEG (http://www-sop.inria.fr/athena/software/OpenMEEG/)

    1.3 Contributing
        Part of my reason for releasing this software is I have many other
        projects to work on and have many features I would still like to
        implement. If you make changes, I would appreciate your contributions
        and more than likely will include them in future releases. If you are
        interested in collaborations, contact me via email (see Section 1.1).

    1.4 Questions and Reporting Bugs
        Questions can be askes using the forums on the sourceforge site hosting
        matio (http://sourceforge.net/projects/matio/forums).

        Bugs, enhancements, etc. should be submitted using one of the trackers
        on the sourceforge page
        (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=176643).


2.0 Building
    This section describes how to build matio. Section 2.1 describes the
    dependencies, Section 2.2 how to build/test matio, and Section 2.3
    documents the platforms matio has been tested on.

    2.1 Dependencies
        MATIO has two optional dependencies. These are not required for the
        software to work, but without them some files may be unreadable. Zlib
        is required to read/write level 5 MAT files that use compression. HDF5
        is required to work with newer MAT files that use the HDF5-format
        files

        2.1.1 zlib
              To support compressed MAT files, zlib 1.2.3 or greater is
              required. The zlib software can be downloaded from
              http://zlib.net.

        2.1.2 HDF5
              Support for MAT file version 7.3 requires the HDF5 library. This
              library can be downloaded from The HDF Group website
              (http://www.hdfgroup.org/). MATIO requires HDF5 version 1.8.x,
              and must be built with default API version 1.8 (i.e.
              '--with-default-api-version=v18').

            For windows, the pre-compiled binaries can be used which also
            include a DLL of zlib to satisfy the zlib dependency.

    2.2 Building matio
        2.2.1 Quick Build Guide
            The primary method for building the software is using 'configure'
            followed by 'make'. After building, the testsuite can be executed to
            test the software using 'make check'. The software can be installed
            using 'make install'. For example,
                $ tar zxf matio-X.Y.Z.tar.gz
                $ cd matio-X.Y.Z
                $ ./configure
                $ make
                $ make check
                $ make install

            If any of the tests in the testsuite fail, you should report the failure
            using the tracker (see Section 1.4). You should attache the generated
            testsuite.log file to the bug report.

        2.2.2 Configure Options
            The configure script used to build the software takes a number of
            options. This section describes the key options.

                * --enable-mat73=yes
                    This flag en/disables the support for version 7.3 MAT files.
                    The option only makes sense if built with HDF5 as support
                    for version 7.3 files will be disabled if HDF5 is not
                    available.
                * --enable-extended-sparse=yes
                    Enable extended sparse matrix data types not supported in
                    MATLAB. MATLAB only supports double-precision sparse data.
                    With this flag, matio will read sparse data with other
                    types (i.e. single-precision and integer types).
                * --with-matlab=DIR
                    This option specifies the directory (DIR) with the 'matlab'
                    program. With this option, the testsuite will check that the
                    MAT files written by matio can be read into MATLAB. Without
                    this, the test will only check that matio can read the file
                    written and if successful the test will be skipped. If matio
                    can not read the file, the test will fail.
                * --with-zlib=DIR
                    This option specifies the prefix where zlib is installed
                    (see Section 2.1.1 for information about zlib).
                * --with-hdf5=DIR
                    This option specifies the prefix where the HDF5 software is
                    installed (see Section 2.1.2 for information about HDF5).
                * --with-default-file-ver=version
                    This option sets the default MAT file version (4,5,7.3) that
                    will be used when writing. The default file version is used
                    by the Mat_Create macro and the Mat_CreateVer function when
                    MAT_FT_DEFAULT is used for the version argument.
                * --with-libdir-suffix=suffix
                    This option specifies a suffix to apply to library
                    directories when installing and looking for dependent
                    libraries (i.e. HDF5 and zlib). For example, some multi-arch
                    Linux distributions install 64-bit libraries into lib64 and
                    32-bit libraries into lib.

        2.2.3 Visual Studio
            A visual studio solution is provided as visual_studio/matio.sln.
            The solution is set up to build a DLL of the matio library
            (libmatio.dll) and matdump tool in release mode and assumes HDF5 is
            available in the directory specified by the HDF5_DIR environment
            variable. The build was tested with the HDF5 visual studio pre-built
            Windows binaries including zlib.

        2.2.4 Testsuite
            A testsuite is available when building with the GNU autotools. To
            run the testsuite, First configure and build matio. After building
            run 'make check' to run the testsuite. If matio was built without
            zlib, the compressed variable tests will be skipped. If built
            without HDF5, the tests for version 7.3 MAT files will be skipped.
            If the path to the MATLAB application was not specified
            (--with-matlab), the write tests will fail if matio cannot read the
            file and skip if matio can read the file. The write tests will pass
            if MATLAB is available and can also read the file.

            To report matio testsuite failures, compress the testsuite.log file
            in the test sub-directory of the build directory. Upload the
            compressed log file along with a bug report (see Section 1.4 for
            information on reporting bugs).

    2.3 Platforms
        The library has been tested/used on Linux, Windows, OS X, and AIX
        including both little-endian and big-endian architecture.

3.0 License
    This software is provided under a Simplified BSD license. See the COPYING
    file for details on the license.
