Re: [Plplot-devel] Is it time to remove our old fortran and our old Tcl bindings and examples?

[Arjen M. <Arj...@de...>]

Hi Alan,



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan W. Irwin [mailto:ir...@be...]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2017 6:00 AM
> To: Arjen Markus; PLplot development list
> Subject: Is it time to remove our old fortran and our old Tcl bindings and examples?
>
> Hi Arjen:
>
> This e-mail concerns cruft removal for both the Fortran and Tcl cases.
>
> Fortran:
>
> We introduced the new Fortran binding and corresponding examples as of
> PLplot-5.12.0 (released on 2017-01-29), but as a safety measure supplied the old
> Fortran binding and examples if the user specified the CMake option -
> DPL_DEPRECATED_fortran=ON (which gave access to bindings/old_fortran and
> examples/old_fortran).
>
> Since that release I think we have gotten not even one complaint about the new
> fortran binding which introduced many backwards incompatible changes.  (There
> was one complaint about lack of Fortran support in CMake for a non-mainstream
> Fortran compiler, but that is a different issue that affects both our old and new
> fortran binding for that one user.) Furthermore, the next release is likely coming out
> in early 2018 or roughly one year later than PLplot-5.12.0.
> Therefore, I believe this release cycle is the right time to get rid of the cruft
> consisting of the -DPL_DEPRECATED_fortran=ON option and bindings/old_fortran
> and examples/old_fortran.
>
> If you agree with this timing, and assuming nobody on the plplot-general list objects
> (i.e., there is nobody there who is still actually using the old fortran binding), then I
> would plan to remove this cruft within a few days from now (just to make this
> change early in the release cycle so it gets maximum testing before the release in
> early 2018).

I agree - keeping the old stuff around (especially with the extra logic required for its support) is an unnecessary complication.

>
> Tcl:
>
> There is a similar story with the redacted Tcl API introduced in PLplot-5.12.0.
> There have been no complaints about that large backwards incompatible change,
> and the next release will be roughly a year away from the release where this
> change was introduced.
> Therefore, I believe this release cycle is the right time to get rid of the cruft
> consisting of the -DUSE_NON_REDACTED_TCL_TK=ON option and the
> corresponding bindings/non_redacted_tcl, bindings/non_redacted_tk,
> bindings/non_redacted_tk-x-plat, examples/examples/non_redacted_tcl,
> and examples/non_redacted_tk.
>
> If you agree with this timing, and assuming nobody on the plplot-general list objects
> (i.e., nobody there is using the -DUSE_NON_REDACTED_TCL_TK=ON option),
> then I would plan to remove this cruft within a few days from now just as in the
> fortran cruft removal case and for similar reasons.
>
Here the same remark holds.

> General remarks about this cruft removal:
>
> I am pushing this cruft removal because keeping those old files around implies we
> should sometimes test the -DPL_DEPRECATED_fortran=ON and -
> DUSE_NON_REDACTED_TCL_TK=ON options (which I don't want to do) and also
> do minimal maintenance to the old versions of the files (which I also don't want to
> do).  For example, I am about to remove the long-deprecated plrgb, plrgb1, plhls,
> and plwid.  But some of those are assumed to be available (when -
> DPL_DEPRECATED=ON) in the old versions of the Fortran and Tcl bindings.
> Which implies I need to either maintain those old versions consistent with the
> removal of plrgb, plrgb1, plhls, and plwid or do the much simpler task of deleting
> those old versions.
>
I see that some of the source files for Tcl/Tk contain these macros. These can be simplified as well then.

Regards,

Arjen

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