Re: gnuplot-4.2.rc1: --program-suffix and gnuplot_x11

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

I don't think this is the right approach, because it does
not truly allow for the general case of a mixed architecture
environment.  What if gnuplot_x11 is running on a different
machine than gnuplot?  What if gnuplot was built 64-bit, but
gnuplot_x11 was built 32-bit?

What I have seen work for other program packages is to leave
the name of the executable unchanged, but install multiple
architecture-specific executables into parallel directories.
The correct executable is selected by virtue of the PATH
set for your current session. In the case of gnuplot you
could also use the GNUPLOT_DRIVER_DIR environmental variable
to control this, but you'd have to set it in an 
architecture-dependent fashion via your login script.

In other words, if we are to do this at all, I think the
correct approach is to leave the file name of gnuplot_x11
unchanged, but teach the install procedure to create a
directory name from the architecture type.  Or just add
a set of instructions for manual installation of this
one component in a mixed-architecture environment.
  
> In my case, I used --program-suffix for a multi-architecture build.
> But previously I also used --program-suffix="-patched" to distinguish
> my modified version from the upstream version.  IIRC I also had to
> symlink gnuplot_x11 accordingly back then.

I just leave the patched executable in the patched source
directory where it was built, and setenv GNUPLOT_DRIVER_DIR
to point there if I want to test it.


-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle WA