Re: problem building latest cvs snapshot

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:

> We can continue to discuss whether it is a mistake to initialize
> x11 on entry if it is the default terminal.

Well, it sort of is (unless in some initialization file the user specifies that the desired terminal is x11).

I've just seen another bug in the SourceForge list:

 [ 997481 ] [autoconf] name transformation of gnuplot_x11

which is closely related to this issue.  We should probably clear this up and get rid of this bug report.  I've just tested as the bug reporter instructed.  After build is the X11 driver:

[gnuplot]# ls /usr/local/libexec/gnuplot/4.1
gnuplot_x11-suffix  gnuplot_x11_tempmovedhere

[gnuplot]# gnuplot
Expected X11 driver: /usr/local/libexec/gnuplot/4.1/gnuplot_x11
Exec failed: No such file or directory
See 'help x11' for more details

1) The first thing that strikes me is that I get the instruction "See 'help x11' for more details".  However, how do I see the help when I can't get to the program command line?  So, this really shouldn't be a critical error in my opinion.  Yes, the x11 driver should register an error, but in a graceful way from the command line.

2) As for gnuplot attempting to find gnuplot_x11 at start up.  Perhaps this should be delayed to the point of first trying to create a plot.  Is that possible?  Keep in mind, if the error is more graceful as in (1) then this really isn't a critical issue anymore as gnuplot wouldn't critically fail.  There would be the error message and the user could simply change to a different terminal driver.  But still, not having the error message until absolutely necessary would be nice.

3) As to the original bug report, so long as someone is looking at this, would the patch I put on SourceForge suffice?  If one does something like

./prepare
./configure --program-prefix=PRE --program-suffix=SUF
make install

The files PREgnuplotSUF and PREgnuplot_x11SUF will be created.

In the bug report, Hans states that adding the suffix to gnuplot-x11 isn't necessary.  However, I'd argue it is.  The person who uses "program-suffix" is someone who might create a special version of the program that has a recent patch or something.  If that patch effected gplt_x11.c then it would be nice to have the two different versions of gnuplot_x11 and gnuplot_x11-suffix.  E.g., someone wants the most recent official release and one with a great new feature, "gnuplot" and "gnuplotspif".

4) Could the following warnings be removed?

checking for CAIRO... Package cairo was not found in the pkg-config search path.Perhaps you should add the directory containing `cairo.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'cairo' found
configure: WARNING: Cairo can't be found. The wxWidgets terminal will not be compiled.
checking for PANGO... Requested 'pango >= 1.10' but version of Pango is 1.6.0
configure: WARNING: Pango can't be found. The wxWidgets terminal will not be compiled.
checking for PANGOCAIRO... Package pangocairo was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `pangocairo.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'pangocairo' found
configure: WARNING: Cairo rendering support for Pango can't be found. The wxWidgets terminal will not be compiled.

Isn't it the job of the auto-build tools to sort out what should and shouldn't be built?  This isn't a valid situation for warnings from my perspective.

Dan