[Plplot-devel] Latest stable autotools versions now work with plplot

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

As an experiment today I tried updating from

autoconf-2.57, automake-1.7.3, and libtool-1.4.3 to
autoconf-2.57, automake-1.7.6, and libtool-1.5

In all cases I used the vanilla versions from
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/, and
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/ The new versions above are the latest stable
autotools versions.

Also I used a fresh cvs checkout to get the latest of everything from plplot
with no interference from previous ./bootstrap.sh runs with old versions of
autotools.

The results were fine when I did my usual build, install, and
non-interactive tests.  All postscript files were identical to the 5.2.1
version except for x21c.ps where some labels for the plots seemed to have
changed.  (I don't understand why this is the case since the version of
x21c.c in cvs is the same as for 5.2.1, but perhaps something else is
causing the label change [number of ms on some of the independent variables].)

There was one error in the configuration.  Apparently the aclocal.m4
delivered by the new libtool has a syntax error in the (new) command for
testing allowed line length on all Unix systems.  I cannot figure out what
the syntax error is so I have not sent in a bug report to the FSF, but
hopefully others have done their bug reporting duty on this one.  Anyhow,
the configuration seemed to continue fine after the reported syntax error
so I judge this problem to be non-consequential for us.

There was a lot of warnings generated in the build having to do with
/usr/share/libtool.la.  Again, I believe this is due to a non-consequential
libtool error (or else there is a real error in that file for the Debian
stable libfreetype6-dev package) since the correct linking lines seem to be
generated by libtool regardless.

Although these warnings and non-consequential errors are a bit off-putting,
libtool-1.5 is supposed to have all sorts of bugs fixed relative to prior
versions (I am thinking about the segfaults in libltdl, the non-working
cygwin and mac OS X ports, the wonky install relocatibility, etc. for older
versions of libtool). Thus, since it seems to produce good results (at least
for my standard test) my judgement is we should encourage its use from now
on.

Thus, for all developers here, I suggest you move to

autoconf-2.57, automake-1.7.6, and libtool-1.5

to make sure we are all on the same page.  Also, if there are any additional
problems with using the latest autotools stable versions, please report it
to this list.

In order to get it all to work I have cvs committed removing two lines from
bootstrap.sh. The prior version assumed there was a configure.in in libltdl
and destroyed configure.ac there.  This is not consistent with
libtool-1.5 which has configure.ac in that directory.  I removed the two
offending lines, and I believe the result should still be okay for
libtool-1.4.x since it should automatically find configure.in (if it exists)
without having to copy it to configure.ac.

Rafael, if I am incorrect and that cp and rm logic in libltdl is really
needed for your libtool-1.4.x (which I assume you want to keep for now for
your Debian packaging needs until libtool-1.5 gets into Debian unstable),
could you please reinstate it in a way that does not destroy configure.ac if
that file exists?

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org), the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net), and the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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