Re: [Plplot-general] Including cairo driver

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

Hi Walt:

Thanks for all these good questions below.  I am CCing the
plplot-general mailing list because I hope my answers will not only
help you but also others who are lurking on that list.

On 2014-05-14 12:57-0700 Walt Brainerd wrote:

> I found revision 13119--a bunch of stuff.
>
> What do I do with all that?

Probably the "bunch of stuff" is because you accessed everything in
our huge repository which includes all prior releases, all our branch
developments, and the trunk version.  Instead, you should just access
the trunk version alone.  The easiest way to do that is go to
sf.net/projects/plplot ==> code, and follow the directions there.

Your equivalent of the "svn --checkout" command for the svn trunk
version will create the source tree with a top-level directory named
with whatever name you decided on.  After that, create a build
directory outside the source tree, change to that (initially empty)
build directory, then execute the cmake command using the absolute
location of the top-level directory of the source tree and with
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX set to an absolute location that is outside both
the source tree and the build tree.  Keeping those three trees
completely separate from each other is the most convenient way to
set up PLplot builds.

Using that method, your source tree remains absolutely pristine with
no non-source tree files put into it.  And it is easy to remove your
entire build tree after an install without interfering with the
install tree or source tree. Furthermore, whenever one of us updates
the svn trunk version, you can get access to that update by using the
equivalent of the svn --update command in the top-level of the source
tree with no revision specified.  The result will tell you what
revision number you updated to, and so long as that number is equal to
or greater than the revision number of our commits that you are
interested in, you should be fine (unless we screw up the svn trunk
version, but that happens rarely because that is the one that gets
daily use from the Plplot developers and that is the version of PLplot
that eventually becomes our next release after much comprehensive
testing using epa_build).

> My compiles have all been with 5.10.0.

The combination of a binary download of cairo + "MinGW Makefiles" is
absolutely cutting edge stuff (Principally, because I was unmotivated
to test that case before because it never worked for me.  But now it
does.  :-) )

Because this is cutting edge, it is required that you use the svn
trunk version of PLplot until our next release (probably something
like 6 months from now because we plan to move to a git repository,
and it will take a large effort on our part to adjust to that large
change).

> And do I have to worry about "epa_build",
> whatever that is ???

No, it is not necessary for you to use or be concerned about epa_build
at this time unless you want to do comprehensive testing.  But if you
are interested in comprehensive testing or are just plain curious at
all about the PLplot epa_build sub-project, I have documented in
cmake/epa_build/README the several reasons why I implemented it.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

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

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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