#HDF5 is doing great. So basically:
1. Originally, upstream used autotools. The build system installed a h5cc wrapper which — besides being a compiler wrapper — had a few config-tool style options.
2. Then, upstream added #CMake build system as an alternative. It installed a different h5cc wrapper that did not have the config-tool style options anymore.
3. Downstreams that tried CMake quickly discovered that the new wrapper broke a lot of packages, so they reverted to autotools and reported a bug.
4. Upstream closed the bug, handwaving it as "CMake h5cc changes have been noted in the Release.txt at the time of change - archived copy should exist in the history files."
5. Upstream announced the plans to remove autotools support.
So, to summarize the current situation:
1. Pretty much everyone (at least #Arch, #Conda-forge, #Debian, #Fedora, #Gentoo) is building using autotools, because CMake builds cause too much breakage.
2. Downstreams originally judged this to be a HDF5 issue, so they didn't report bugs to affected packages. Not sure if they're even aware that HDF5 upstream rejected the report.
3. All packages remain "broken", and I'm guessing their authors may not even be aware of the problem, because, well, as I pointed out, everyone is still using autotools, and nobody reported the issues during initial CMake testing.
4. I'm not even sure if there is a good "fix" here. I honestly don't know the package, but it really sounds like the config-tool was removed with no replacement, so the only way forward might be for people to switch over to CMake (sigh) — which would of course break the packages almost everywhere, unless people also add fallbacks for compatibility with autotools builds.
5. The upstream's attitude suggests that HDF5 is pretty much a project unto itself, and doesn't care about its actual users.
