[Plplot-general] Warning: PLplot-5.2.0 has been released again today

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

Soon after the release of 5.2.0 last week we found PLplot-5.2.0 would not
build properly on some systems.  Debian woody and RH7.3 were okay, but RH
8.0 (and other systems) were not. The workaround (just verified today) is
simple; execute 'touch include/plDevs.h.in' before executing the normal
configure; make; make install.

Since this is such a simple change I have just uploaded a new
plplot-5.2.0.tar.gz (and associated RH 7.3 rpm's) with a recent date for
include/plDevs.h.in that will insure that this build problem does not occur.
Thus, those who download PLplot-5.2.0 from now on should not encounter these
problems. The new binary rpm should not be appreciably different from the
old version except for the build date.  The new src rpm carries within it
the revised PLplot-5.2.0 tarball.

A summary (see plplot-devel for details) of what causes this problem is
cruft left over from our old configuration system is confusing the new
configuration system (and yours truly!). The net result is the contents of
include/plDevs.h.in are correct, but the file date is older than other
critical files.  Thus, when make is executed on user's systems an incorrect
attempt is made to update this file using autoheader, and on some systems
the build is stopped by inconsistencies between the user's autoheader and
the autotools used to build the PLplot-5.2.0 tarball. The touch workaround
mentioned above completely takes care of this problem so the build should
proceed to completion with no reference to autoheaders or any other
autotool.

Of course, the fundamental solution to the date problem for
include/plDevs.h.in is to get rid of the cruft in our configuration system,
and we are working toward that goal.  We hope to bring out PLplot-5.2.1 on a
time scale of weeks with this streamlining of the configuration system
completed. However, the differences will probably be transparent for users
compared to the PLplot-5.2.0 that was just released for the second time with
new file date for include/plDevs.h.in.

Keep those 5.2.0 reports coming!

Alan W. Irwin for the PLplot developers.
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

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