[Plplot-devel] Removal of our file support (consisting mostly of test examples in examples/perl) for the external PDL::Graphics::PLplot project?

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

By historical accident Rafael (followed by other developers here)
helped out with Doug Hunt's
external PDL::Graphics::PLplot project by supplying test examples in
examples/perl to see how well that external project's results agreed
with our C examples (which was typically not very well). Also (see
examples/perl/README.perldemos), because of how PDL::Graphics::PLplot
is organized as an integrated project within PDL rather than an external
project that depends on PDL, it is a rather complex
procedure involving modification of system PDL files to actually use
our examples in perl examples to test that external project with a
recent PLplot build.  Because of that complexity, it has been quite a
few years since I have tried that procedure myself, and I have never
heard of anyone else trying it recently. Also, from the results of

git log --name-status examples/perl

it appears those standard examples are in minimum maintenance
mode, e.g., the most recent changes 
concern issues such as removing trailing whitespace rather than
adjusting to the major plot changes that have been accumulating
over the years for all the rest of our standard examples.

In sum, examples/perl is essentially never used or tested by us any
more, and its presence in our project is misleading (since those are
only support files for an external project and not a sign that we have,
for example, implemented our own perl/pdl binding).  Therefore, (if Doug is
interested) those files should be part of the PDL::Graphics::PLplot
project rather than our own project.

As a result of the above considerations, I would like to remove
examples/perl from PLplot, and this change would not preclude Doug
copying those files (entirely permitted under the LGPL license for
them) to his own PDL::Graphics::PLplot project from plplot-5.13.0
(either from the release tarball or from that tag on our master
branch) if he so desires.  Accordingly, I plan to make this move in a
couple of days unless I hear any strong objections here.

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).
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Linux-powered Science
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