[Plplot-devel] AT branch distribution tarball now works on solaris

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

I have just committed some minor changes so that everything would build from
the distribution tarball on solaris.

Getting x08c compiled, however, was a bit of an adventure on solaris (and
the fun was greatly improved by the compile farm computers going down 4 [!]
separate times while I was working there today.) The compilation of x08c was
done in the following way:

plplot-5.1.0_solaris_sparc/libtool gcc x08c.c
-I/home/users/a/ai/airwin/plplot_install_solaris_sparc/include/plplot
-L/home/users/a/ai/airwin/plplot_install_solaris_sparc/lib -lplplotd -o x08c
-I.

i.e., I used the libtool script in the top of my plplot tree.  That resulted
in the following command (which of course could also be used directly
without the libtool script):

gcc x08c.c \
-I/home/users/a/ai/airwin/plplot_install_solaris_sparc/include/plplot -o \
x08c -I. \
/home/users/a/ai/airwin/plplot_install_solaris_sparc/lib/libplplotd.so -lm \
-ldl -R/home/users/a/ai/airwin/plplot_install_solaris_sparc/lib

Both the libtool and gcc form showed link errors with an undefined isinf. I
looked that up on google "solaris isinf", and sure enough that is an unfixed
bug in the solaris libraries (unless you pay for new ones).  See
http://www.docs.spruce.se/docs/os/solaris2/Q5.6.html where they also publish
the following workaround:

#include <ieeefp.h>
int isinf(double x) { return !finite(x) && x==x; }

With those two lines inserted in the x08c.c code, both of the two above
build commands completed without error, and for both, the "./x08c -dev psc"
command generated identical results to my prior tests today.

So this is pretty convincing evidence that the AT approach is going to work
cross-platform, and I therefore urge those with other platforms accessible
to them to give the current AT branch a try.  Geoffrey, I especially have
you in mind because you have complained before that CVS HEAD would not work
on solaris, and I think AT is the answer.  Maurice, I would also especially
appreciate you giving this a try with your access to alphas.

Meanwhile, I will work on getting at least the same drivers and front ends
working as current CVS HEAD in preparation for the forthcoming merge of AT
to HEAD.

Alan

email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902	FAX: 250-721-7715
snail-mail:
Dr. Alan W. Irwin
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, V8W 3P6
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