Re: [Plplot-general] Problem building on Linux

[Alan W. I. <Ala...@gm...>]

On 2018-09-12 19:46+0100 Phil Rosenberg wrote:

> Hi Alan
> I think I have fixed it. In fact it turned out that test-drv-info was
> doing exactly what it should.
>
> running ldd on the wxwidgets.so file revealed 3 dependencies that
> could not be found.

> The flavour of Linux I am building on is Arch,
> which maintains rolling upgrades of all packages rather than fixed
> update releases. Since the last wxWidgets release on Arch, the three
> dependencies had all upgraded with new ABIs. I built wxWidgets from
> source and now everything is working as it should.

Hi Phil:

I am glad to hear you have apparently solved this library inconsistency
problem.

Debian Testing = Buster and MinGW-w64/MSYS2 are also examples of
rolling releases.  For all of those and assuming there was no
packaging error (e.g.,, a mistatement of dependencies), a distribution
update should only update dependencies if system libraries and
executables (e.g., from wxwidgets) were updated in a consistent way
with those dependencies.  I have been using Debian for almost two
decades now, and in that time I have never noticed any such
inconsistency issue, and I suspect such issues are rare for the
ArchLinux as well since it has such a good reputation.  So perhaps the
ArchLinux system version of wxwidgets was fine with the updated
dependencies, and the trouble was only with your own built version of
wxwidgets?

>From Arjen's experience with MinGW-w64/MSYS2, that is one distribution
where you should expect some inconsistency issues.  The problem is the
developers of that distribution have a very small team with limited
resources, and they appear not to realize how smooth the user
experience should be with rolling releases.  I assume that is because
they don't realize Debian and other Linux distributions have set such
a high standard for rolling releases.  My hope is the MinGW-w64/MSYS2
development team will soon figure it out so that distribution becomes
as smooth as the other high-quality rolling releases.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

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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