mereged in old patches for issue #225
This is a path submitted by barry.wardell@gmail.com to the google code site on issue #225 with the following message:

'I have tested these patches with the latest mercurial version and can confirm that they work fine for me.
I also find the attached patch for the high-level interface convenient.'

Shoved into git by Thomas Caswell <tcaswell@gmail.com>
re-factored prop list classes a bit.

The classes for data set creation (`PropDCID`) and group creation
(`PropGCID) now inherit from the object creation class (`PropOCID`),
which has the code for dealing with `H5P*obj_track_times`.
and required changes to pxd file
Added unit test for disabling track_times for data sets
fixed comment on test function
Add low-level interface to get_vfd_handle
Rename get_vfd_handle to get_descriptor, fix issues and add two tests
Merge pull request #271 from tacaswell/issue_225

Issue 225 (disable mtime tracking for datasets)
Fix old bytes/string glitch exposed by mtime tests
Fixes for remaining comments
Merge pull request #300 from tovrstra/vfd_handle

Add low-level interface to get_vfd_handle
pep8 fixes
pep8 cleanup
pep8 clean up
pep8 cleanup
added needed types
added needed function headers to api_functions.txt
added the easy mdc functions
added wrapper object for H5AC_cache_config_t struct