Re: readline on Mac problems again

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

On Sunday 29 March 2009, Dmitri A. Sergatskov wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 7:33 AM, Mojca Miklavec
> <moj...@gm...> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I have reinstalled my MacOS X 10.5 from scratch. After trying to build
> > gnuplot I get the following error reports (the repository is from
> > 3.3.2009; I'll upgrade to the latest version asap).
> >
> > I almost urgently need a working version of self-compiled gnuplot, so
> > I might install the needed packages in the meantime, but I can provide
> > some more feedback if needed (under assumption that it won't start
> > working out-of-the-box in the meantime after I start installing
> > additional packages).
> >
> > Mojca
> >
> > g++  -g -O2   -o gnuplot alloc.o axis.o binary.o breaders.o bitmap.o
> > color.o command.o contour.o datafile.o dynarray.o eval.o fit.o
> > gadgets.o getcolor.o graph3d.o graphics.o help.o hidden3d.o history.o
> > internal.o interpol.o matrix.o misc.o mouse.o parse.o plot.o plot2d.o
> > plot3d.o pm3d.o readline.o save.o scanner.o set.o show.o specfun.o
> > standard.o stdfn.o tables.o tabulate.o term.o time.o unset.o util.o
> > util3d.o variable.o version.o   -lreadline  -lncurses  -lz
> > Undefined symbols:
> >  "_rl_forced_update_display", referenced from:
> >      _restore_prompt in command.o
> >  "_rl_ding", referenced from:
> >      _alert in mouse.o
> >  "_history_list", referenced from:
> >      _write_history_list in history.o
> >  "_rl_complete_with_tilde_expansion", referenced from:
> >      _rl_complete_with_tilde_expansion$non_lazy_ptr in plot.o
> >  "_rl_reset_after_signal", referenced from:
> >      _main in plot.o
> > ld: symbol(s) not found
> > collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
> > make[3]: *** [gnuplot] Error 1
> > make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
> > make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
> > make: *** [all] Error 2
> 
> 
> This looks to me as usual MaCOS problem with its readline not being
> real readline. There are few ways to solve it, perhaps the simplest is to pass
> "-with-readline=no" to configure.


Yup. Same problem as always.  MacOS tells a lie that it provides libreadline.
Please see the comments and discussion on
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=1839048&group_id=2055&atid=102055

As of recently, gnuplot allows a 3rd option for line input.
You can configure it to use the NetBSD editline library
	./configure --with-readline=bsd

But there is still a missing piece.
The MacOS so-called "readline" library is really  a wrapper for the BSD editline
library.  So gnuplot _could_ use it if it were named correctly.  But since it
calls itself "readline" rather than "editline" we cannot detect it automatically.
I imagine this MacOS craziness could be detected and worked around by the
gnuplot configuration script, but no one has yet contributed a modified script
to handle it.

-- 
Ethan A Merritt