Re: [Plplot-devel] Getting rid of the last tmpnam use in our code

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

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 01:14:12PM +0000, Andrew Ross wrote:
> 
> The only remaining occurence of tmpnam is in drivers/tk.c where it is used to 
> create a temporary name for a named pipe. This can't be replaced with 
> pl_create_tempfile since we don't actually want to create a file. The following
> call to mkfifo will fail however if the name already exists and so this should
> be safe.
> 
> This use can be avoided altogether if you use the dp option for the tk driver 
> which uses sockets rather than named pipes for communication.

To follow up on my own post - I've checked the code more closely. Currently
there is no way to set PLD_dp which controls this. Also it seems to use
the tcl-dp package which is no longer supported. Perhaps this is not an option
after all. 

There do appear to alternatives (for example the libtcl-udp package on debian
based on tcludp). This is another example where the tcl / tk support is slowly 
languishing for lack of a champion. If anyone still actively uses it and is
looking for a project, this could be a good candidate.

Andrew