Re: [Plplot-devel] python works fine on RH 7.3

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On Sun, 15 Sep 2002, Maurice LeBrun wrote:

> OK, I have built, installed, and tested 1.3.11 through 1.3.15,
> and found:
>
>     #define SWIG_init    initplplotc
>     #define SWIG_name    "plplotc"
>
> are used by 1.3.11 - 1.3.13, and
>
>     #define SWIG_init    init_plplotc
>     #define SWIG_name    "_plplotc"
>
> are used in 1.3.14 & 1.3.15.  Since it's in both of the last two versions it
> would seem to be a convention change and not a bug.  Jeez, I'd think this
> would warrant a major version number change since it's clearly not backward
> compatible.

We need the features of swig-1.3.x so we must use it, but it is an unstable
release series (like kernel 2.5.x) so you do expect changed features from
one 1.3.x release to the next. Also, the pace of change should slow as they
converge to the 2.0 version. Earlier this year they hoped to bring that out
this month.  I don't know how much, if at all, that schedule has slipped.

After some searching I just found that the convention change on the leading
underscore is explained in http://www.swig.org/Doc1.3/Python.html#n6.
Actually, I like that convention because it fits right with our needs to
distinguish the extension module name from the python wrapper module name.
In fact, Gary and I adopted the 'c' in plplotc for exactly that same reason,
but if we had been smarter back then, the underscore prefix would have been
a better (IMHO), and I would certainly be happy to adopt it now.

I don't know the significance of changing SWIG_init.  Gary, can you explain
that and/or make swig-1.3.15 work for us?  If so, I would be willing to
adopt that version in anticipation that it will be an easy step from there
to swig-2.0, once that comes out.

Alan