Release 1.8.3 of Hyrax is for the HDF5 handler rewrite. The HDF Group, under a grant from NASA, have completed a major rewrite of the HDF5 handler for Hyrax. The new software no longer uses compile-time switches; instead it now uses a small set of run-time options. This means one binary distribution is all anyone needs and everyone can experiment with the new features. In short, the new features enable the software to read many more HDF5 files than before and to render them as CF-compliant data.