There are two reasons why the netcdf4-python windows binaries from <http://code.google.com/p/netcdf4-python/> won't work from within ArcGIS10: 1) The hdf5dll.dll file used by ArcGIS is incompatible with the one required by netcdf4-python's netcdf.dll. Some functions are missing. Hence the error message when loading netcdf.dll. Copying all netCDF4-python provided DLLs from "C:\Python26\ArcGIS10.0\lib\site-packages" to "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Desktop10.0\Bin" worked but might interfere with ArcGIS functions (no tested). Also there should be no other netcdf.dll files in the Windows DLL search path. 2) ArcGIS-python ships with numpy-1.3, which is quite outdated and will not work with extensions compiled with the latest numpy. Importing netcdf4-python will crash. Upgrading to numpy-1.6.1 solved this but might influence the arcpy package (not tested). Embedded manifests are not the problem here. NetCDF4.pyd was compiled with the patch from <http://bugs.python.org/issue7833> and also netcdf.dll and all dependent DLLs are linked with the 'MANIFEST:NO' option.
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