#1652 program-suffix=xx is not passed on to Qt

[Karl Ratzsch]

When configuring with

./configure --program-suffix=xx --with-qt

the resulting executable tries to call /usr/local/libexec/gnuplot/5.1/gnuplot_qt, instead of ...gnuplot_qtxx

gnuplot> plot x
Could not start gnuplot_qt with path "/usr/local/libexec/gnuplot/5.1/gnuplot_qt"
Could not start gnuplot_qt with path "/usr/local/libexec/gnuplot/5.1/gnuplot_qt"
^C
gnuplot>

The x11 terminal loads the correct driver.

[Hans-Bernhard Broeker]

Changed title since the fault doesn't apply as globally the original title suggested.

[Hans-Bernhard Broeker]

Fix is in CVS HEAD and 5.0 branch now

[Karl Ratzsch]

Hm, in 50cvs I still get the error message given above.

In 51cvs, the fix breaks "make check" if a suffix is given during configure, because the qt driver binary is only renamed during "make install":

make[3]: Entering directory '/home/ratzsch/src/gnuplot/demo'
******************** file simple.dem ********************
Could not start gnuplot_qt with path "/home/ratzsch/src/gnuplot/demo/../src/gnuplot_qt51"
Could not start gnuplot_qt with path "/home/ratzsch/src/gnuplot/demo/../src/gnuplot_qt51"

[Ethan Merritt]

What is the need for this option?
Normally the driver version is encoded in the path name, not the file name:
/usr/libexec/gnuplot/5.0/gnuplot_qt
/usr/libexec/gnuplot/5.1/gnuplot_qt
and so on.

Is it just so that Windows can have ".exe" added to the driver name?

[Hans-Bernhard Broeker]

There is not generally a need for this option, but it's a nice-to-have capability of the auto-tools.

The name of installed programs can be changed (prefixed, suffixed, or generally transformed) to enable multiple instances of the same version to be installed in parallel. E.g. one could have two versions with different configurations, both fully installed and usable at the same time, and without juggling installation paths and such, e.g. one could

mkdir wx qt
pushd wx ; ../configure --with-wx --without-qt --program-suffix=WX && make install ; popd
pushd qt ; ../configure --without-wx --with-qt --program-suffix=QT && make install; popd

and have both gnuplotWX and gnuplotQT

Is it just so that Windows can have ".exe" added to the driver name?
No. That's handled by the #ifdef WIN32 in the source code (and $(EXEEXT) in the makefile)

[Ethan Merritt]

I don't find that example very compelling. There's no sense in producing outboard drivers gnuplot_qt_nowxt or gnuplot_qt_noqt. In general the outboard drivers will not be affected by configuration changes to the main program.

[Karl Ratzsch]

My use case is to have the latest patchlevel release installed plus e.g. the latest cvs (stable or HEAD) or a version with an additional patch applied. Quite useful.

Even people who do no compile themselves at all might want to add a second build, e.g. the stock debian versions plus one from debian-backports, which might have the same version number.

[Hans-Bernhard Broeker]

The outboard drivers are not the primary targets for this, anyway. The main goal would be to have both a /usr/local/bin/gnuplot_qt and a /usr/local/bin/gnuplot_wx installed in parallel. But autoconf will apply the transformation to all programs being installed, so it affects the outboard drivers, too. Autoconf cannot know which compiler switches affect which of the installed binaries, anyway, so it has no other chance but to assume they are all equally affected.

[Karl Ratzsch]

The 5.0cvs still tries to call "gnuplot_qt" instead of "gnuplot_qtxx".