# What’s new in h5py 2.7.1

2.7.1 is the first bug-fix release in the 2.7.x series.

## Bug fixes

> - GH903 Fixed critical issue with cyclic gc which resulted in segfaults

> - GH904 Avoid unaligned access fixing h5py on sparc64

> - GH883 Fixed compilation issues for some library locations

> - GH868 Fix deadlock between phil and the import lock in py2

> - GH841 Improve windows handling if filenames

> - GH874 Allow close to be called on file multiple times

> - GH867, GH872 Warn on loaded vs complied hdf5 version issues

> - GH902 Fix overflow computing size of dataset on windows

> - GH912 Do not mangle capitalization of filenames in error messages

> - GH842 Fix longdouble on ppc64le

> - GH862, GH916 Fix compounds structs with variable-size members

### Fix h5py segfaulting on some Python 3 versions

Through an intersection of Python Issue 30484 and GH888, it was possible for the Python Garbage Collector to activate when closing `h5py` objects, which due to how dictionaries were iterated over in Python could cause a segfault. GH903 fixes the Garbage Collector activating whilst closing, whilst Python Issue 30484 had been fixed upstream (and backported to Python 3.3 onwards).

### Avoid unaligned memory access in conversion functions

Some architectures (e.g. SPARC64) do not allow unaligned memory access, which can come up when copying packed structs. GH904 (by James Clarke) uses `memcpy` to avoid said unaligned memory access.