Re: [Plplot-devel] 5.8.0 Release?

[Andrew R. <and...@us...>]

> To Andrew and Hazen:
> 
> With your recent work on Java it looks like there are now only
> two remaining release critical issues (both for Mac OS X).  Here is Hazen's
> excerpted old message about those issues from when they were still fresh in
> his mind:
> 
> On 2007-11-02 23:32-0400 Hazen Babcock wrote:
> 
> > ./plplot-test.sh was somewhat less succesful.
> >
> > [snip]
> > Testing front-end f95
> > PLplot library version: 5.8.0-RC1
> >
> > *** PLPLOT ERROR, ABORTING OPERATION ***
> > UTF-8 string is malformed: UTF-8 st, aborting operation
> >
> > *** PLPLOT ERROR, ABORTING OPERATION ***
> > UTF-8 string is malformed: UTF-8 stri, aborting operation
> [...]
> >
> > Testing front-end octave
> > /usr/local/share/plplot5.8.0-RC1/examples/..
> >
> > *** plstyl:
> >
> > plstyl(mark, space)
> >
> > Set up a new line style
> >
> >
> > Additional help for built-in functions, operators, and variables
> > is available in the on-line version of the manual.  Use the command
> > `help -i <topic>' to search the manual index.
> >
> > Help and information about Octave is also available on the WWW
> > at http://www.octave.org and via the he...@oc...
> > mailing list.
> >
> > error: called from `plsstrm'
> > error: evaluating if command near line 86, column 3
> > error: called from `figure' in file `/usr/local/share/plplot_octave/figure.m'
> > error: evaluating for command near line 4, column 1
> >
> >
> > It looks like there are problems with F95 [...] and octave. Version 
> > information:
> >
> > gfortran --version
> > GNU Fortran 95 (GCC) 4.2.0 20060512 (experimental)
> >
> > octave -version
> > GNU Octave, version 2.1.73 (powerpc-apple-darwin7.9.0).
> > Copyright (C) 2006 John W. Eaton.
> 
> The Debian testing version (which works well for PLplot) is
> 
> irwin@raven> gfortran --version
> GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.2.3 20071014 (prerelease) (Debian 4.2.2-3)
> 
> It appears the Debian version is 17 months later which is a long time in the
> gfortran world.
> 
> Hazen, perhaps a prerelease version of 4.2.3 is a bit much to ask, but could
> you install, say, version 4.2.1 or 4.2.2?  That might cure the "utf-8"
> string problems your gfortran compiler detects in every example (which are
> mostly all ascii, by the way).

For comparison, I don't see this (on i386) with Ubuntu edgy 
GNU Fortran 95 (GCC) 4.1.2 20060928 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-13ubuntu5)
or on Ubuntu gutsy with 
GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.2.1 (Ubuntu 4.2.1-5ubuntu4)
so it looks like this is either a problem just with 4.2.0 or it is a
OS-X specific issue. Given it is utf8 string handling it could be either
really.

> In contrast, your octave version is reasonable consistent with the
> one I tested successfully on Debian testing.
> 
> irwin@raven> octave --version
> GNU Octave, version 2.1.73 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu).
> 
> Andrew, is there any chance of quickly tracking down the source of the many
> octave errors above for the Mac OS X version of octave 2.1.73?
> 
> Normally, I am pretty picky about fixing bugs before release, but a lot of
> effort has already been put in doing just that for this 5.8.0 release. Thus,
> even I can see we may have reached the point where it's expedient to release
> with known bugs so we can get on with a number of interesting projects that
> have been put off until just after 5.8.0 comes out.  So if there are no
> reasonably easy fixes to one or both of the above issues, my vote would be
> to note the issues in the release notes for 5.8.0 (i.e., publicly write off
> gfortran 4.2.0 and/or octave 2.1.73 for Mac OS X), and get 5.8.0 out the
> door.
> 
> Let me know the prospects for straightforward fixes for the above two
> problems, and in the absence of those whether you agree we should just go
> ahead with the 5.8.0 release.

This is odd. 2.1.73 has been extensively tested as it has been the
stable version for some time. Hazen, did the octave bindings used to
work for you? Do you know when the change occured? It is interesting the
error occurs in plstyl. There were problems with this (it didn't accept
null strings), but I patched matwrap in plplot to fix this back in June. 
Are you sure you have a completely clean tree and are not picking up old
versions of the library? Could you test with an old version of plplot
before those changes to see if that is the cause of the error?

Andrew