The primary method used in the examples for reading HDF-EOS2 files (HDF4 format) is to use the netCDF4 package. Most of the time, however, this package does not come ready-out-of-the-box to read HDFEOS files either because the underlying netcdf library was not compiled with hdf4 support or because the underlying gdal library was not compiled with HDFEOS 2-or-5 support. The directions below specify how this can be overcome in certain situations.

In cases where the datafile is and HDF-EOS5 swath file, HDF4 support is not needed. The netCDF4 package can usually read these files, but code is also provided for reading the file with h5py.

GDAL is used to read some HDF-EOS grid files (both version 2 and 5).

The Fedora 20 netcdf RPM is built with hdf4 support, so therefore netcdf4-python can read HDF4 files out of the box, and the gdal RPM includes support for HDFEOS, so for python2, everything just works. This is the ideal situation, yay Fedora!

The Fedora 20 repositories do not include a Python3 RPM for basemap, but you can still install basemap via pip.

$ pip-python3 install basemap --user

The RPM for the GDAL library includes support for HDF-EOS2.

Anaconda is ideal for the Windows platform although the netcdf4 library was not compiled with hdf4 support. For HDF4, you can use PyHDF at http://hdfeos.org/software/pyhdf.php. The H5PY package that is installed by default will read HDF5 swath files, and the gdal package (not installed by default) will read both HDF4 and HDF5 grid files.

$ conda install basemap
$ conda install netcdf4
$ conda install gdal

If you use MacPorts, you should install the hdf4 and dap variant of the netcdf port.

$ sudo port install netcdf +hdf4 +dap

Also with MacPorts, you should install the hdf4, hdf5, and netcdf variant of the gdal port along with basemap.

$ sudo port install gdal +hdf4 +hdf5 +netcdf
$ sudo port install py27-matplotlib-basemap
$ sudo port install py27-netcdf4

Again with MacPorts, there is as of 2014-07-22 no basemap port for Python 3.4. The following steps will work, though.

1. If already installed, uninstall the py34-matplotlib port.
2. Create a virtual environment using pyvenv-3.4 (with system site packages) and activate it.
3. Build and install matplotlib 1.3.1 from source.
4. Download and install basemap 1.0.7.
5. Download and install the python module for gdal from PyPi.