RE: [Plplot-devel] Deadline for 5.1.0 is Monday 8 AM PST = 16:00 UT

[Geoffrey F. <fu...@ga...>]

Alan W. Irwin writes:
 > Hello everybody.  Since our efforts to release 5.1.0 seem to have stalled,
 > I'm reinitiating the test/release plan.  

Thanks Alan for restarting the count down.

I'm afraid I am writing to report some possibly discouraging news.
The Tk driver is not working for me right now.  I'm getting:

Packet send failed:
         pl_PacketSend -- error writing to fifo: bad file number
TCL command "plclient_link_end" failed:
         no application named "cplace_x86kaig"
Program aborted

when I run my code.  The tk driver starts, the plframe is displayed,
then it all vanishes in a puff of smoke, and 50% of the time or so, it
prints the above message, the other times it all simply vanishes
without a trace.

Now, you might suspect its just my code.  And that could well be.
However, it runs to completion with no upset using many other devices,
including xwin, ps, and plmeta.  With a metafile, I can render to
device tk.  Also the plplot C examples work with dev tk.  So I realize
this is a pretty inconclusive set of data.  

Trying to pin the blame on my own code, I've gotten as far as running
it under electric fence, but again, nothing turns up.  I don't know if
anybody else has experience with electric fence, but I've been using
it a little here ever since I upgraded one of my machines to Red Hat
7.1, and it seems to be pretty good to me, has caught bugs in other
porgrams.  I don't know if I'll be able to run a purified version or
not, as I don't currently have access to a purify license (but am
working on it).

Since the data I am providing is so inconclusive, I don't want it to
hold up the release by itself.  If no one but me is having troubles
with the tk driver, we should press on with the release.  But it would
be nice if other people with substantial PLplot client codes could
just give the current cvs head a whirl, and make sure the tk driver
and plframe widget work for you today as well as they did a month
ago.  If others notice trouble, speak up on plplot-devel.

If no one but me finds problems, I think Alan should proceed as
planned, presuming the problem is of my own creation.  But if anybody
else has evidence the tk driver isn't working right, then in that case
I think maybe we should find a way to dig deeper.

Cheers to all,

-- 
Geoffrey Furnish         fu...@ga...