[Plplot-devel] What more steps do you need to do to finish up your part of the PLplot error handling topic?

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

Hi Phil:

There are a number of unresolved topics between us including getting
styling and comprehensive testing to work on MSYS2 and to fix up the
remaining "interactive" errors for the wxwidgets device (e.g., making
examples 17 and 20 display "interactively" like they currently do for
xwin).  But this post is about yet another unresolved topic between us
concerning the steps necessary to finish up all but the tedious final
editing work (which I can take responsibility for)
on your PLplot exception handling topic.

If I remember the status of that topic correctly, you got your
setjmp/longjmp C exception handling to work well in a proof-of-concept
way with at least one public API function providing the TRY and CATCH
blocks with plexit changed to throw exceptions with THROW.

Assuming that summary is correct as far as it goes, can you comment on
whether you handled the problem of one public API function calling one
or more other public API functions? (plbox calling plaxes is a trivial
example of this, but there are many more such examples.)  In other
words, can you propagate the exception introduced by plexit back
through one or more public API calls until you reach the first public
API call in the chain that has been called by an
external library or app?

Assuming the solution to that propagation problem is straightforward
(or has been implemented already) are all the remaining steps simply
editing ones, e.g., putting the appropriate TRY and CATCH blocks of
code at the start of each public API function and replacing all calls
to exit by calls to plexit?  If so, I would be willing to do those
necessary editing steps and conclude this project by merging all our
combined work (in a private topic branch shared between us) to the
master branch.  But I don't know how much effort it will take you to
get to the stage with this topic where I can take over by finishing it
that way.  I also don't know whether you think your work on this topic
is higher or lower priority than your work on the other unresolved
PLplot topics I have mentioned above.  So please let me know what your
PLplot priorities are so I have some idea what to expect from you by
the time 5.16.0 is released (which should ideally occur before
December 1st, i.e., we are already roughly one third of the way
through the current release cycle).

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.org); 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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