The h5py team is happy to announce the availability of h5py 2.2.1. This release fixes a critical bug reported by Jim Parker on December 7th, which affects code using HDF5 compound types.
We recommend that all users of h5py upgrade to avoid crashes or possible data corruption.
The issue may affect code which modifies HDF5 compound types in-place, by specifying a field name or names when writing to a dataset:
>>> dataset['field_name'] = valueUnder certain conditions, h5py can supply uninitialized memory to the HDF5 conversion machinery, leading (in the case reported) to a segmentation fault. It is also possible for other fields of the type to be corrupted.
This issue affects only code which updates a subset of the fields in the compound type. Programs reading from a compound type, writing all fields, or using other datatypes, are not affected. If you are using code that takes advantage of this feature, please double-check your files to ensure your data has not been affected.
Github issue: h5py/h5py#372 Original thread: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/h5py/AbUOZ1MXf3U