Re: [Plplot-devel] Tentative plan for removing our support of Qt4

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

On 2019-09-06 21:33-0400 Hazen Babcock wrote:

>
>> 
>> @Hazen: In light of the smoke binding issue we should discuss this
>> still tentative roadmap further.
>> 
>> That smoke binding issue is bindings/qt_gui/smoke/ needs to be removed
>> when we drop support for Qt4 because [smoke is not available for
>> Qt5](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20636312).  You apparently
>> implemented the PLplot smoke binding because that binding was needed
>> by another independent project of yours.
>
> No problem, go ahead and remove the smoke bindings.

Hi Hazen:

Thanks for that clarification.  As a result, the timing of the roadmap
for removing everything to do with Qt4 (including our smoke and pyqt4 bindings)
from PLplot is much more certain and now reads as follows:

Revised roadmap:

* PLplot-5.17.0.  Officially deprecate everything in PLplot that is
   related to Qt4 in our release notes and also mention there the
   planned dropping of everything in PLplot that is related to Qt4 in
   PLplot-5.18.0.  Despite those planned remarks in the release notes,
   the only change from the Qt-related build system logic for 5.16.0
   that has just been committed will be a deprecation warning to the
   user when they specify -DPLPLOT_USE_QT5=OFF.

* PLplot-5.18.0.  Drop everything in PLplot that is related to Qt4.
   That essentially means removing all logic stanzas in our build
   system that are currently only exercised when -DPLPLOT_USE_QT5=OFF.
   The removal of our smoke binding and our pyqt4 binding (only
   available when -DPLPLOT_USE_QT5=OFF) will be part of this change.
   The result of this change should be a substantial simplification of
   our build system.  Also, our current lack of testing of the
   -DPLPLOT_USE_QT5=OFF case (because I don't have time to test both
   -DPLPLOT_USE_QT5=ON and -DPLPLOT_USE_QT5=OFF) obviously will no
   longer be a concern after this change.

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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