Re: [Plplot-devel] netbsd portability effort status--- one showstopper and 3 other problems

[Rafael L. <lab...@ps...>]

* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-03-24 22:05]:

> That leaves the most obvious candidate for the ./get-drv-info segfault as
> the libltdl library that is used by ./get-drv-info and which comes with my
> libtool version (libtool-1.4.3 straight from FSF).  Besides the segfault
> there are also a number of valgrind "Conditional jump or move depends on
> uninitialised value(s)" associated with running ./get-drv-info on Linux.
> These message at best indicate the FSF guys haven't tried valgrind on their
> libltdl library and at worst may indicate a real memory management problem
> with that library. Rafael, we should do a test also with your libtool
> (patched Debian libtool-1.4.3) as soon as you finish the perl stuff and can
> make a tarball. Also, if that doesn't work, we should discuss the
> possibility of trying later libtool versions.
> 
> [...]
>
> * octave doesn't work because perl scripts refer to the wrong perl path
> #!/usr/bin/perl (rather than /usr/pkg/bin/perl) on netbsd.  One possibility
> is to change all our perl scripts so they all start with #!/usr/bin/env
> perl, but Rafael has decided a better way (and I agree) is simply to invoke
> perl explicitly by using $(PERL) scriptname_whatever throughout our
> Makefile.am files.

A new release-candidate tarball is availabale at the usual place
(http://people.debian.org/~rafael/plplot.html) which should fix the problems
above.  Let us hope that the libltdl library included by my Debian system
will do better than that of FSF, present in Alan's machine.

> BTW, the test week for our users is currently scheduled starting 12th April
> with the actual release scheduled on the 19th [...]

It is probably a better idea to announce widely and immediately the
availability of the release candidate tarballs, even if not all the
portability problems are fixed.  The sooner the users start trying it, the
sooner they will found bugs that we have overseen and the higher are the
chances that we keep our schedule in time. Why wait until April 12th?

-- 
Rafael