[Plplot-devel] Plplot now working well with Debian Buster + release timing

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

To Orion and Ole:

Commit a730ebe34 has removed the last of the "new software" issues I
have identified with Debian Testing = Buster.

@Orion: I encourage you to try that commit on Fedora to see if you get
similarly good results for all Linux-available components of
PLplot for that other cutting-edge Linux platform.

@Both: You both also might want to experiment with this commit as the
basis for much-improved PLplot packages for Fedora and Debian.
However such packages can only be considered preliminary until PLplot
makes an official release.  What I can say on that topic is commit
a730ebe34 is an important milestone on the trail to the next release,
but we are not there yet.

For example, the CMake test that is automatically produced every night
by my computer for the CMake developers builds and tests the latest
CMake.  One of those tests is the PLplot contract test which tests
whether a build (but not test) of PLplot is successful.  That test is
formally succeeding, but those PLplot builds are incomplete (with the
cairo device driver dropped) because of incompatibilities with the way
we configure our cairo device driver using internal details of the
CMake pkg-config capability.  Although the use of such internal
details has worked well over many years with few adjustments needed
for changes to those internal details with CMake version, it is again
no longer working with the very latest CMake.  This reflects the
fundamental fragility of any method that uses internal details.
Therefore, to deal with this issue my plan is to completely rewrite
our support for the cairo device using the official CMake pkg-config
support rather than internal details of that support.  And there are
also a few other topics I would like to squeeze into the next release.
So this makes the ETA of our next PLplot release still somewhat
uncertain, but I am still hoping to get it done this year (before
Christmas season) rather than early next year.

Alan
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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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