Quick Install:
To install the latest HDF.PInvoke 1.8, run the following command in the Package Manager Console
Install-Package HDF.PInvoke -Version 1.8.17.1
To install the latest HDF.PInvoke 1.10, run the following command in the Package Manager Console
Install-Package HDF.PInvoke -Pre
HDF.PInvoke is a collection of PInvoke signatures for the 1.8 and 1.10 families of the HDF5 C-API. It's practically code-free, which means we can blame all the bugs on Microsoft or The HDF Group 😄
It is not a high-level .NET interface for HDF5. "It's the GCD
of .NET bindings for HDF5, not the LCM." 
The prerequisites are included in the NuGet packages.
The HDF.PInvoke.dll managed assemblies, located in bin\[Debug,Release],
depend on the unmanaged DLLs hdf5.dll, hdf5_hl.dll, szip.dll, and
zlib.dll for the corresponding processor architecture, which can be obtained
here.
On the first call to an H5* function, the application's configuration file
(e.g., YourApplication.exe.config) is searched for the key NativeDependenciesAbsolutePath,
whose value, if found, is added to the DLL-search path. If this key is not
specified in the application's config-file, then the HDF.PInvoke.dll assembly
detects the processor architecture (32- or 64-bit) of the hosting process and expects
the unmanaged DLLs in the bin32 or bin64 subdirectories relative to its
location. For example, if HDF.PInvoke.dll lives in C:\bin, it expects
the unmanaged DLLs in C:\bin\bin32 and C:\bin\bin64.
The the DLL-search path is updated using the PATH environment variable of the running
process. If that attempt fails, the native binaries will be loaded from their default locations
(such as installed by the HDF5 installers).
HDF.PInvoke is part of HDF5. It is subject to the same terms and conditions as HDF5. Please review COPYING or http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/Copyright.html for the details. If you have any questions, please contact us.
The best way to support HDF.Pinvoke is to contribute to it either by reporting bugs, writing documentation (e.g., the cookbook), or sending pull requests.