plplot-devel — Technical discussion about PLplot development

Re: [Plplot-devel] plplot-5.2.0 / redhat 8.0 (fwd)

[Joao C. <jc...@fe...>]

On Saturday 01 February 2003 20:54, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> I am forwarding this report from Matt Newville in the hopes that somebo=
dy
> can confirm it on their RH 8.0 system or know what further questions to
> ask.
>
> Alan
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 15:49:35 -0600 (CST)
> From: Matt Newville <new...@ca...>
> To: Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...>
> Subject: plplot-5.2.0 / redhat 8.0
>
> [...]
>
>   ./configure --prefix=3D/usr/local/ --enable-dyndrivers
>   make
>   make install
>   cd examples/c
>   gcc -g -O -o x01c x01c.c -I/usr/local/include/plplot -L/usr/local/lib
> -lplplot -lm -lc
>
> So far so good. On top of that, '/x01c -dev XXX' appears to work
> correctly for XXX=3D(png,jpeg,ps,xfig).  Things are looking up.
> However, as others have seen, './x01c -dev xwin' reports:
>
>  Plplot library version: 5.2.0
>  X Error of failed request:  BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
>   Major opcode of failed request:  1 (X_CreateWindow)
>   Serial number of failed request:  10
>   Current serial number in output stream:  14

This does not happens with me on a freshly installed RH-8.0 nor in my=20
SuSE-8.1, but happened in another SuSE-8.1 and now in another RH-8.0!

So, please Matt, run ./xdpyinfo and send us the output, particularly the=20
section relating to "visuals":

(this is my own SuSE-8.1 xdpyinfo)

 number of visuals:    4
  default visual id:  0x21 <--------------
  visual:
    visual id:    0x21 <----------------
    class:    TrueColor
    depth:    16 planes
    available colormap entries:    64 per subfield
    red, green, blue masks:    0xf800, 0x7e0, 0x1f
    significant bits in color specification:    8 bits
  visual:
    visual id:    0x22
    class:    DirectColor
    depth:    16 planes

=2E.. other visual follows, please send them all

The other SuSE-8.1 where the xwin driver fails, xdpyinfo says:

default visual id:  0x23 <----------------------
  visual:
    visual id:    0x21
    class:    PseudoColor
    depth:    8 planes
    available colormap entries:    256
    red, green, blue masks:    0x0, 0x0, 0x0
    significant bits in color specification:    8 bits
  visual:
    visual id:    0x22
    class:    PseudoColor
    depth:    12 planes
    available colormap entries:    4096
    red, green, blue masks:    0x0, 0x0, 0x0
    significant bits in color specification:    8 bits
  visual:
    visual id:    0x23 <------------------------
    class:    TrueColor
    depth:    24 planes
    available colormap entries:    256 per subfield
    red, green, blue masks:    0xff, 0xff00, 0xff0000
    significant bits in color specification:    8 bits

>
> In addition, './x01c -dev tk' reports:
>
>  Plplot library version: 5.2.0
>  X server insecure (must use xauth-style authorization); command
>  ignored
>      while executing
>  "send $client "set server_name [list $server_name]""
>      (procedure "plserver_link_init" line 25)
>      invoked from within
>  "plserver_link_init"
>      (procedure "plserver_init" line 85)
>      invoked from within
>  "plserver_init"
>
> I am tunneling X through ssh, but that's pretty standard practice
> these days...

So there is some problem with the way you/ssh setups .Xauthority. In my t=
ests=20
in RH-8.0 I also used ssh and the tk driver runs OK:

jcard@jcard:~> ssh -CX clio.fe.up.pt
[jcard@clio c]$ cat /etc/redhat-release=20
Red Hat Linux release 8.0 (Psyche)
[jcard@clio jcard]$ cd plplot-5.2.0/examples/c
[jcard@clio c]$ ./x01c -dev xwin
Plplot library version: 5.2.0
[jcard@clio c]$ ./x01c -dev tk =20
Plplot library version: 5.2.0

Thanks,
Joao

>
> Thanks for all your help,
>
> --Matt Newville
>
> |=3D Matthew Newville        mailto:new...@ca...
> |=3D GSECARS, Bldg 434A      voice: (630) 252-0431 / 1713
> |=3D Argonne Natl Lab        fax:   (630) 252-0436
> |=3D 9700 South Cass Ave     cell:  (708) 804-0361
> |=3D Argonne, IL 60439 USA   http://cars9.uchicago.edu/~newville/
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.NET email is sponsored by:
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Re: [Plplot-devel] troubles building plplot 5.2.0 without dynamic drivers

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

* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-02-01 12:13]:

> I believe dropping $LIB_TAG from the names in STATIC_DRIVERS should take
> care of virtually all the errors that have been reported by the users of
> PLplot-5.2.0.

See my last cvs commit, in which I also dropped the $LIB_TAG addition for
dynamic drivers.

I am happy we are doing progress towards the 5.2.1 release.

-- 
Rafael

[Plplot-devel] plplot-config

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

Geoffrey expressed an opinion last year that plplot-config should be
reinstated so I had that on our PROBLEMS agenda until today when I
reconsidered the situation.  (Of course, anybody can put that on the
PROBLEMS agenda again if they are not convinced by using the
plplot_libtool alternative.)

Yesterday, I had a chance to see plplot_libtool in action for the static
drivers case where the gnome driver is part of the deal.  It worked
flawlessly to produce roughly half a page of information required for each
of examples/c/x??c.  I just doubt we are going to be able to reproduce that
excellent plplot_libtool result with plplot-config (unless we wrap
plplot_libtool by plplot-config, but I am not sure that is possible).  So
instead of using plplot-config, I would advocate using the simple calls to
plplot_libtool that are in the *installed* ..../examples/c/Makefile (and
similarly for the f77, c++, and tk examples). Anyhow, Geoffrey, will you
please try the plplot_libtool approach to see whether it is suitable for
your own linking needs?

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 Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

[Plplot-devel] Removed substantial cruft from sysloc.in

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

The original motivation here was to get rid of all the X stuff that was no
longer needed in sysloc.in as discussed on list.  But then I noticed more
and more stuff that was also unneeded ("find . -name Makefile.am |xargs grep
symbol" is your friend) and removed that as well. The result is a file size
reduced by 28 per cent! Thus, be sure to cvs update before changing this
file yourself because I expect otherwise you will get a large number of
conflicts.

I expect our resulting configure files will be substantially smaller, and
our Makefiles will be slightly smaller, but the real benefit here is it
is much clearer how we are configuring things.

I tested the result by building and installing PLplot with essentially all
drivers (including gnome, ntk, etc.) and all front ends with double
precision for the two cases of static and dynamic devices.  For both
configurations I ran plplot-test.sh successfully.  In fact, for the static
device case I also ran plplot-test.sh --device=png and the resulting 352 png
files were identical to the plplot-5.2.0 test for the dynamic driver case.
So I think all is well (famous last words....)

By all means, please get out there and test that assertion by hammering the
result for as many platforms as you have access to. I have been repeating
this mantra a lot recently, but I really want to see substantial and
thorough testing for 5.2.1 before we release it.

I have a lot of time to make up in my job so that is all I am planning to do
with PLplot before 5.2.1 release (April 5th if that is convenient for all of
you) except to test *your* changes and also update the documentation (which
was not done for 5.2.0).

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 Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

[Plplot-devel] plplot-5.2.0 / redhat 8.0 (fwd)

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

I am forwarding this report from Matt Newville in the hopes that somebody
can confirm it on their RH 8.0 system or know what further questions to ask.

Alan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 15:49:35 -0600 (CST)
From: Matt Newville <new...@ca...>
To: Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...>
Subject: plplot-5.2.0 / redhat 8.0

[...]

  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/ --enable-dyndrivers
  make
  make install
  cd examples/c
  gcc -g -O -o x01c x01c.c -I/usr/local/include/plplot -L/usr/local/lib -lplplot -lm -lc

So far so good. On top of that, '/x01c -dev XXX' appears to work
correctly for XXX=(png,jpeg,ps,xfig).  Things are looking up.
However, as others have seen, './x01c -dev xwin' reports:

 Plplot library version: 5.2.0
 X Error of failed request:  BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
  Major opcode of failed request:  1 (X_CreateWindow)
  Serial number of failed request:  10
  Current serial number in output stream:  14

In addition, './x01c -dev tk' reports:

 Plplot library version: 5.2.0
 X server insecure (must use xauth-style authorization); command
 ignored
     while executing
 "send $client "set server_name [list $server_name]""
     (procedure "plserver_link_init" line 25)
     invoked from within
 "plserver_link_init"
     (procedure "plserver_init" line 85)
     invoked from within
 "plserver_init"

I am tunneling X through ssh, but that's pretty standard practice
these days...

Thanks for all your help,

--Matt Newville

|= Matthew Newville        mailto:new...@ca...
|= GSECARS, Bldg 434A      voice: (630) 252-0431 / 1713
|= Argonne Natl Lab        fax:   (630) 252-0436
|= 9700 South Cass Ave     cell:  (708) 804-0361
|= Argonne, IL 60439 USA   http://cars9.uchicago.edu/~newville/

Re: [Plplot-devel] troubles building plplot 5.2.0 without dynamic drivers

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

On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Joao Cardoso wrote:

> On Tuesday 28 January 2003 23:59, Doug Hunt wrote:
> > Hi all:  I have been using plplot 5.1 for some time.  I just downloaded
> >
> > 5.2.0 and ran into this:
> >  > ./configure --with-double --prefix=/ops/tools
> >  > make
> >
> > ...
> >
> > gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I../include -I../include -I../bindings/tcl
> > -I../bindings/tk -I../bindings//tk-x-plat -I/usr/X11R6/include -g -O2
> > -MT matrixInit.lo -MD -MP -MF .deps/matrixInit.Tpo -c
> > ../bindings/tcl/matrixInit.c -o matrixInit.o >/dev/null 2>&1
> > mv -f .libs/matrixInit.lo matrixInit.lo
> > make[1]: *** No rule to make target `dg300d.lo', needed by
> > `libplplotdrv.la'.  Stop.
> > make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/huntd/src/plplot-5.2.0/drivers'
> > make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
>
> Hi, Doug
>
> I confirm your report on my SuSE-8.1.

In fact the combination of --with-double and static drivers fails on all
platforms that I tested (RH 8.0 and Debian)!  Default configure (which
corresponds to single and static drivers) works fine so that is why we have
been having relatively few (compared to ~3000 downloads) reports on this.

Turned out it was one of those 'obvious' errors.  The STATIC_DRIVERS list is
a list of libtool compiled objects (*.lo) files, and of course there should
be no $LIB_TAG on the name since those aren't shared objects and ultimately
they become part of libplplot[d].so.5.2.0 As soon as I dropped $LIB_TAG from
the STATIC_DRIVERS names (see recent commit of configure.ac) static drivers
worked fine with either single or double.  (They worked fine before for
PLplot-5.2.0 in the single case because $LIB_TAG is empty in that case.)

In contrast the DYNAMIC_DRIVERS are shared objects (*.la files for libtool)
which are installed in the drivers directory.  They must have $LIB_TAG as
part of the name if you want to be able to have both single and double
precision versions of PLplot coexisting at the same time.

I believe dropping $LIB_TAG from the names in STATIC_DRIVERS should take
care of virtually all the errors that have been reported by the users of
PLplot-5.2.0.

The only additional user error reports I can recall involve X problems.
Joao, did that guy who you answered ever come back with the information you
requested?  I have a private report of an additional X problem from somone
else which I will post to this list separately.

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 Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

Re: [Plplot-devel] Autoheadaches [was: Re: Make of plplot-5.2.0 fails ...]

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

* Maurice LeBrun <mj...@ga...> [2003-01-31 23:41]:

> Sorry I've been MIA the last few days.  Do you still need this info?

Yes, please. Alan commited my patch containing the new plConfig.h.in.  Take
a look at it and tell was what is lacking and what should be removed from
it.

-- 
Rafael

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

[Maurice L. <mj...@ga...>]

Alan W. Irwin writes:
 > On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:
 > > This is a good idea.  We should try to use standard approaches when they
 > > exist. For instance, why not starting using /usr/share/aclocal/tcl.m4
 > > instead of that complete messy code for Tcl/Tk configuration in sysloc.in?
 > 
 > I won't have time/expertise to look at that Tcl/Tk-specific one myself, but
 > it would be great if Maurice would....;-)

Another one for the great list.  But if you tire of waiting on me, you know
what to do! :)

-- 
Maurice LeBrun    mj...@ga...
Research Organization for Information Science and Technology of Japan (RIST)

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

[Maurice L. <mj...@ga...>]

Jo=E3o Cardoso writes:
 > - I would like to drop the --with-shlibs option and use only the=20
 > standard --enable-shared.
 >=20
 > -  --enable-dyndrivers should be the default, as it is the more test=
ed=20
 > configuration.
 >=20
 > - --with-double should be the default, as most users seems to use it=
.

No problem here.

 > - with-debug should be the default. This is the standard and will he=
lp=20
 > us to trace user reported segfaults/core-dumps.

Here too, although note --with-debug currently doesn't do anything.
Autoconf emits "-g -O2" for gcc by default and appears to use "-g"
for other compilers.  Again, this is something on my list of things
to address when there is time.

--=20
Maurice LeBrun    mj...@ga...
Research Organization for Information Science and Technology of Japan (=
RIST)

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

[Maurice L. <mj...@ga...>]

Alan W. Irwin writes:
 > Furthermore, there are still more problems to solve.  For example, I noticed
 > a warning message from configure:
 > 
 > checking for itcl.h... /usr/include/tcl8.3/itcl-private/generic/itcl.h
 > checking itclDecls.h usability... no
 > checking itclDecls.h presence... yes
 > configure: WARNING: itclDecls.h: present but cannot be compiled
 > configure: WARNING: itclDecls.h: check for missing prerequisite headers?
 > configure: WARNING: itclDecls.h: proceeding with the preprocessor's result
 > configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------------ ##
 > configure: WARNING:     ## Report this to bug...@gn.... ##
 > configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------------ ##
 > checking for itclDecls.h... yes
 > 
 > Something seems really screwed up there.  Maurice, since you worked on that
 > aspect of the configuration before, can you sort this out?

Ugh.  I looked into this a while back and decided it was innocuous.  It sure
is ugly though.. so would be good to fix eventually.  On the infinite list. :)

-- 
Maurice LeBrun    mj...@ga...
Research Organization for Information Science and Technology of Japan (RIST)

Re: [Plplot-devel] Autoheadaches [was: Re: Make of plplot-5.2.0 fails ...]

[Maurice L. <mj...@ga...>]

Rafael Laboissiere writes:
 > * Maurice LeBrun <mj...@ga...> [2003-01-29 22:40]:
 > 
 > > If this works the way you describe, it sounds great.
 > 
 > Hopefully it works the way I described.  If I find some time in the near
 > future, I will try to implement it.  As a preparation, could you please
 > indicate which #defines in the current plConfig.h should not be exported
 > into user's space? You already presented some of them, but I need a complete
 > list.

Sorry I've been MIA the last few days.  Do you still need this info?

-- 
Maurice LeBrun    mj...@ga...
Research Organization for Information Science and Technology of Japan (RIST)

Re: [Plplot-devel] Swig version check implemented

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

On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:

> * Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-01-31 13:00]:
>
> > Since I didn't completely understand Rafael's suggested syntax, I tested
> > this both with swig version 1.3.17 and other versions, and it does what it
> > is supposed to do.
>
> Come on, you have never written programs in sed before?  You are not a real
> man... :-)

Actually, real men only use octal machine code toggled in on front-panel
switches and avoid weird new things like unix and sed....;-)

Seriously, though, thanks for your improvements.

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 Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

Re: [Plplot-devel] Swig version check implemented

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

* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-01-31 13:00]:

> Since I didn't completely understand Rafael's suggested syntax, I tested
> this both with swig version 1.3.17 and other versions, and it does what it
> is supposed to do.

Come on, you have never written programs in sed before?  You are not a real
man... :-)

> But, Rafael, if you have any ideas on how to change that test to < "17", by
> all means do so.

Done.  The trick is to use shell arithmetic evaluation:

    var=4
    if test $(($var > 2)) = 1 ; then echo Yes, \$var is greater than 2 ; fi

This is standard Bourne shell, no bashisms here.

> (A test for < "17" does not work and gives an error message concerning an
> unknown file 17.)

This happens because the shell interprets the token ">"as file redirection.
and not one of the arguments of the test command (like it does for "=" or
"!=").

-- 
Rafael

[Plplot-devel] Swig version check implemented

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

I have just committed a swig version check according to Rafael's detailed
(private) suggestion to me.  The result is $(SWIG) is a no-op if the
developer does not have the correct version (1.3.17).  This change should
not affect ordinary users who won't be using swig in any case.

Since I didn't completely understand Rafael's suggested syntax, I tested
this both with swig version 1.3.17 and other versions, and it does what it
is supposed to do.

Actually, I didn't want an exact test for 1.3.17 since I am fairly sure that
higher versions of 1.3.x will work as well (if/when they come out).
However, I didn't know how to check for micro-version < 17 so I left that as
a != "17" test for now.  But, Rafael, if you have any ideas on how to change
that test to < "17", by all means do so.  (A test for < "17" does not work
and gives an error message concerning an unknown file 17.)

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 Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

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

* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-01-31 08:34]:

> So yes please go ahead and make any required changes so that make dist
> works properly.

Okay, I will cvs commit these and the autoheader-related changes that I
mentioned in a previous post over the weekend.

-- 
Rafael

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

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

On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:

> * Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-01-30 19:10]:

> > Also, all sorts of X configuration is currently done in sysloc.in, and much
> > like the python case I just completed I would rather use the automake
> > macros to configure X to simplify what we do if that is at all possible.
>
> This is a good idea.  We should try to use standard approaches when they
> exist. For instance, why not starting using /usr/share/aclocal/tcl.m4
> instead of that complete messy code for Tcl/Tk configuration in sysloc.in?

I won't have time/expertise to look at that Tcl/Tk-specific one myself, but
it would be great if Maurice would....;-)

> > Are there any other configuration changes anybody wants to tackle before
> > 5.2.1 comes out?
>
> One thing that we must try to achieve is to make "make dist" produce a
> suitable tarball.  Otherwise, I have a couple of small ideas on how to
> improve PLplot such that packaging for Debian (and probably for other
> distros) will be much better.  By the way, I would like to merge the DEBIAN
> branch into HEAD before 5.2.1 comes out.

That merge would be great. Just watch out for zombied files with bad CVS
state information!  I think I got them all, but a merge tests that
completely.

> > Currently, I am thinking of releasing 5.2.1 on 1 March which gives roughly
> > 4 weeks for us to improve the configuration and hammer the result with a
> > variety of tests on a variety of platforms so we don't get egg on our face
> > again.  However, that date is just a suggestion at this point.  If some of
> > the issues I mentioned above take longer than expected to fix we may have
> > to delay the release until even later.
>
> I will be unavailable during part of February, so this schedule will not
> suit me the best.  April 1 would be much better, but that may become
> unacceptably late.

No, that is fine with me (or actually a weekend later).  My current job ends
on 31 March so the difference for me between March 1st and April 1st is 4
time-pressured weekends where I will probably be involved in a last-minute
job-finishing rush while from April 1st to April 5th gives me a lot more
time to concentrate on the testing and release.

So how does Saturday, April 5th sound to the rest of you?

Alan

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

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

On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:

> As I already discussed privately with Alan, we must _absolutely_ use "make
> dist" for generating the distribution tarball, otherwise there will be
> recurrent problems like that with our releases.  Since Alan is reluctant to
> make the move, I volunteer myself to insure that "make dist" will produce a
> suitable and complete tarball for the 5.2.1 release.

That would be great, Rafael.  If the result  passes the plplot-test.sh test,
then I would be happy.

> Just an aside comment: "make dist" does not work in the current CVS tree
> because nodist_ prefixes are lacking in binding/{python,java}/Makefile.am.
> Attached below is the patch that fixes the problem. This patch is harmless
> when building the package and I am going to cvs commit it, if you do not
> object.

One of my weaknesses is I am probably too oriented to results and not to
design.  But the upside of that is I am open to design changes so long as
the result works.  So yes please go ahead and make any required changes so
that make dist works properly.

> I hope to go from Hell to Paradise with the forthcoming 5.2.1 release!

Sounds good to me!

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 Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

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

* João Cardoso <jc...@fe...> [2003-01-31 15:09]:

> If I specify only --disable-shared, at the end in the configure summary 
> appears --with-shlibs=yes. To be sure, I have specified both 
> --disable-shared and --without-shlib, and after make and make install only
> static libs where installed, no drivers where installed and x01c has more
> than 1.6MB and runs OK.

I am relieved to know that static drivers buidl correctly in non-Debian
systems.  Thanks for the info.

> - I would like to drop the --with-shlibs option and use only the 
> standard --enable-shared.
> 
> -  --enable-dyndrivers should be the default, as it is the more tested 
> configuration.
> 
> - --with-double should be the default, as most users seems to use it.
> 
> - with-debug should be the default. This is the standard and will help 
> us to trace user reported segfaults/core-dumps.

I second these four proposed changes.

-- 
Rafael

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

[<jc...@fe...>]

On Friday 31 January 2003 12:51, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:
=2E..
| > Also, there is the issue of static drivers which seemed to fail on
| > all platforms other than Debian. I will make sure they work both
| > for RH7.3 and the limited solaris system I have access to, but
| > after that I rely on the rest of the developers to test my fix
| > (assuming the problem shows for one of those two platforms) on all
| > your accessible platforms.

This is not quite true, since static drivers work in SuSE-8.1 (with the=20
5.2.0 tarball). What I have advised users to do is to use dyndrivers,=20
as that is the more tested configuration.

There is however something that can be confusing, perhaps not only for=20
users but also for libtool: there is the standard --enable-shared and=20
our own --with-shlibs.
If I specify only --disable-shared, at the end in the configure summary=20
appears --with-shlibs=3Dyes. To be sure, I have specified both =20
--disable-shared and --without-shlib, and after make and make install=20
only static libs where installed, no drivers where installed and x01c=20
has more than 1.6MB and runs OK.

| Unless I have access to a non-Debian system (which I don't) I cannot
| help here.  The bug report sent by Doug Hunt to the plplot-devel is
| very terse and I have no clue about the origin of the problem.
|
| > Are there any other configuration changes anybody wants to tackle
| > before 5.2.1 comes out?

- I would like to drop the --with-shlibs option and use only the=20
standard --enable-shared.

-  --enable-dyndrivers should be the default, as it is the more tested=20
configuration.

- --with-double should be the default, as most users seems to use it.

- with-debug should be the default. This is the standard and will help=20
us to trace user reported segfaults/core-dumps.

Joao

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

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

* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-01-30 19:10]:

> (In the back of my mind I can visualize thousands of projects using this
> "echo autoheader ignored" workaround rather than putting on the pressure to
> get the stupid bug fixed.) But I hasten to add I also am unwilling to
> submit a bug report at this time because I simply don't have the time.

Please, do not submit a bug report to the autoconf developers, since there
is no bug here (see my last message).  Our configuration system and our way
to generate tarball is currently broken and my proposed changes will improve
the situation.

That "echo autoheader ignored" workaround is an ugly thing and I doubt that
people out there adopt it.

> Also, all sorts of X configuration is currently done in sysloc.in, and much
> like the python case I just completed I would rather use the automake
> macros to configure X to simplify what we do if that is at all possible.

This is a good idea.  We should try to use standard approaches when they
exist. For instance, why not starting using /usr/share/aclocal/tcl.m4
instead of that complete messy code for Tcl/Tk configuration in sysloc.in?

> Also, there is the issue of static drivers which seemed to fail on all
> platforms other than Debian. I will make sure they work both for RH7.3 and
> the limited solaris system I have access to, but after that I rely on the
> rest of the developers to test my fix (assuming the problem shows for one
> of those two platforms) on all your accessible platforms.

Unless I have access to a non-Debian system (which I don't) I cannot help
here.  The bug report sent by Doug Hunt to the plplot-devel is very terse
and I have no clue about the origin of the problem.

> Are there any other configuration changes anybody wants to tackle before
> 5.2.1 comes out?

One thing that we must try to achieve is to make "make dist" produce a
suitable tarball.  Otherwise, I have a couple of small ideas on how to
improve PLplot such that packaging for Debian (and probably for other
distros) will be much better.  By the way, I would like to merge the DEBIAN
branch into HEAD before 5.2.1 comes out.  I had hold on that because I had
to make too many changes to our pre-AT configuration scheme for Debian.

> Currently, I am thinking of releasing 5.2.1 on 1 March which gives roughly
> 4 weeks for us to improve the configuration and hammer the result with a
> variety of tests on a variety of platforms so we don't get egg on our face
> again.  However, that date is just a suggestion at this point.  If some of
> the issues I mentioned above take longer than expected to fix we may have
> to delay the release until even later.

I will be unavailable during part of February, so this schedule will not
suit me the best.  April 1 would be much better, but that may become
unacceptably late.

-- 
Rafael

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

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

* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-01-30 16:50]:

> The patch applies cleanly on top of my recent changes to sysloc.in and
> configure.ac.  I do get one error message, however, from bootstrap.sh.
> 
> configure.ac:770: required file ./config.h.in' not found

This bug is extremely easy to fix: just invert the order of calls to
autoheader and automake in bootstrap.sh, like this:

    aclocal \
      && libtoolize --copy --ltdl --automake \
      && autoheader \
      && automake --add-missing --copy \
      && autoconf

The problem happens because the automake call tries to run autoconf and then
it barfs on the AC_CONFIG_HEADERS macro, since config.h.in has not yet been
created by autoheader.

The "touch config.h.in" workaround is ugly and unnecessary, and if you agree
I will cvs commit the fixed bootstrap.sh.

> Now for the bad news.  The current commit does not solve the fundamental
> problem that started all this thread:
> 
> Right in the middle of my initial make:
> 
> cd .. && /bin/sh /home/software/plplot_cvs/HEAD/plplot/missing --run autoheader touch ./plDevs.h.in
> 
> UGH!

Well, you have been bitten by the fact that you are not using "make dist" to
generate the tarball.  Had you used "make dist", the tarball would have the
right time stamps (thanks to that touch command in include/Makefile).  Check
for yourself:

    $ rm -rf plplot
    $ cvs co plplot # your CVSROOT env var should be set correctly here    
    $ cd plplot
    $ ls -lt configure.ac include/plConfig.h.in include/plDevs.h.in
    -rw-r--r--    1 rafael   rafael      30417 2003-01-31 02:49 configure.ac
    -rw-r--r--    1 rafael   rafael       1249 2003-01-31 01:15 include/plConfig.h.in
    -rw-r--r--    1 rafael   rafael       1056 2002-12-03 09:39 include/plDevs.h.in
    $ # configure.ac is newer than include/pl{Config,Devs}.h  !!!!!
    $ ./bootstrap.sh
    $ ./configure
    $ make dist
    $ tar xfz plplot-5.2.0.tar.gz
    $ cd plplot-5.2.0
    $ ls -lt configure.ac include/plConfig.h.in include/plDevs.h.in 
    -rw-r--r--    1 rafael   rafael       1056 2003-01-31 13:00 include/plDevs.h.in
    -rw-r--r--    1 rafael   rafael       1249 2003-01-31 13:00 include/plConfig.h.in
    -rw-r--r--    1 rafael   rafael      30421 2003-01-31 12:58 configure.ac
    $ # Now configure.ac is the oldest file.  Great!
    
As I already discussed privately with Alan, we must _absolutely_ use "make
dist" for generating the distribution tarball, otherwise there will be
recurrent problems like that with our releases.  Since Alan is reluctant to
make the move, I volunteer myself to insure that "make dist" will produce a
suitable and complete tarball for the 5.2.1 release.  The other (boring)
release engineering issues (like tests, etc), I will let to Alan, of course
:-)

Just an aside comment: "make dist" does not work in the current CVS tree
because nodist_ prefixes are lacking in binding/{python,java}/Makefile.am.
Attached below is the patch that fixes the problem. This patch is harmless
when building the package and I am going to cvs commit it, if you do not
object.

> I think we have clearly run up against a bug in autoconf since autoheader is
> not supposed to be run on those files at all.  

With my changes to bootstrap.sh and the tarball being generated by "make
dist", everything should be fine.  The call to autoheader is harmless now,
since the autoheader issues have been addressed.  Besides, it will never
happen for regular users if we adopt the "make dist" approach.

I hope to go from Hell to Paradise with the forthcoming 5.2.1 release!

> Rafael, in your first post you had a suggestion for supressing autoheader
> altogether.  Perhaps it is time to try that as a workaround for the bug.

Forget that.  The autoheader call should work fine now.  In sum, there is no
bug to be fixed here.  I will soon remove that setting to AUTOHEADER in
autoconf.ac and cvs commit if you do not object.

> But I am amazed (a) this problem hasn't bitten most of the many projects
> that are using autoconf and cvs together, and (b) the resulting outcry
> didn't generate strong motivation for a quick fix.

Again: there is no bug here.

-- 
Rafael

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

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

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Alan W. Irwin wrote:

> I think we have clearly run up against a bug in autoconf since autoheader is
> not supposed to be run on those files at all.  (It is only supposed to be
> used to generate files from scratch such as config.h.in, not modify existing
> files, and besides these are the second and third files in the list for
> AC_CONFIG_HEADERS, and the documentation says autoheader should only be
> invoked for the first file.)
>
> Rafael, in your first post you had a suggestion for supressing autoheader
> altogether.

I have just (tentatively) committed that workaround as a basis for
discussion and testing.  (Also, I have moved AC_CONFIG_HEADERS right after
AC_INIT as the documentation says to do, but it made no difference, and the
bug still exists for that case.)

What the redefinition means is that autoheader is turned into the command:
"echo autoheader ignored" throughout all Makefiles.  So effectively
autoheader can never be invoked from the make command even in those cases
(e.g., config.h.in) where it *should* be invoked (i.e., whenever
configure.ac is changed, config.h.in should be regenerated, and now that
won't happen automatically using the make command.  However, you can arrange
it to happen from ./bootstrap.sh, and I think that is good enough.
Actually I am not sure if rm -f is cross-platform so I touch; rm; touch
to get a fresh zero-length file which is then replaced by autoheader run
from ./bootstrap.sh.)

Anyhow, I have also committed the ./bootstrap.sh change as a basis for
further discussion and testing.

Note, in my tests so far configure outputs the message that config.h is
unchanged (with the same old date).  There are similar messages for
include/plConfig.h and include/plDevs.h.  So I think these bug workarounds
are doing the right thing with respect to making gratuitous date changes to
header files if none of the symbols have been changed.

However, the gratuitous touching of include/plConfig.h.in and
include/plDevs.h.in is a bit of a pain with regard to the CVS messages about
what files have been recently updated when you are trying to commit
something.  But I can live with that until the autoconf/autoheader bug is
fixed.  (In the back of my mind I can visualize thousands of projects using
this "echo autoheader ignored" workaround rather than putting on the
pressure to get the stupid bug fixed.) But I hasten to add I also am
unwilling to submit a bug report at this time because I simply don't have
the time.  To do it right you would make a really simple fake "hello world"
project with a couple of defines and then see whether autoheader is invoked
appropriately or not.

Anyhow, I think we have a tentative solution (thanks mostly to Rafael).
Of course it will require extensive testing.

Furthermore, there are still more problems to solve.  For example, I noticed
a warning message from configure:

checking for itcl.h... /usr/include/tcl8.3/itcl-private/generic/itcl.h
checking itclDecls.h usability... no
checking itclDecls.h presence... yes
configure: WARNING: itclDecls.h: present but cannot be compiled
configure: WARNING: itclDecls.h: check for missing prerequisite headers?
configure: WARNING: itclDecls.h: proceeding with the preprocessor's result
configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------------ ##
configure: WARNING:     ## Report this to bug...@gn.... ##
configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------------ ##
checking for itclDecls.h... yes

Something seems really screwed up there.  Maurice, since you worked on that
aspect of the configuration before, can you sort this out?

Also, all sorts of X configuration is currently done in sysloc.in, and much
like the python case I just completed I would rather use the automake macros
to configure X to simplify what we do if that is at all possible.

Also, there is the issue of static drivers which seemed to fail on all
platforms other than Debian. I will make sure they work both for RH7.3 and
the limited solaris system I have access to, but after that I rely on the
rest of the developers to test my fix (assuming the problem shows for one
of those two platforms) on all your accessible platforms.

Are there any other configuration changes anybody wants to tackle before
5.2.1 comes out?

Currently, I am thinking of releasing 5.2.1 on 1 March which gives roughly 4
weeks for us to improve the configuration and hammer the result with a
variety of tests on a variety of platforms so we don't get egg on our face
again.  However, that date is just a suggestion at this point.  If some of
the issues I mentioned above take longer than expected to fix we may have to
delay the release until even later.

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 Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

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

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:

> The promised patch is attached below.  It is not yet fully test, but at
> least bootstrap.sh works (both autoconf and autoheader).  I am also
> attaching the new include/plConfig.h.in file, but its contents may change.
> acconfig.h must be deleted from and include/plConfig.h.in must be added to
> the CVS repository.
>
> Here is a summary of the changes:
>
>     * In configure.ac, AM_CONFIG_HEADER is replaced by AC_CONFIG_HEADERS.
>       config.h is now the first element in the arguments list.
>
>     * All AC_DEFINE and AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED macros in configure.ac and
>       sysloc.in have now three arguments, as mandated by the autoheader docs.
>
>     * Added at the top of plConfig.h:
>
>          #if HAVE_CONFIG_H
>          #  include <config.h>
>          #endif
>
>     * The strange call touch plDevs.h in bootstrap.sh has been removed.
>
>
> Could you please check if this patch is okay?

The patch applies cleanly on top of my recent changes to sysloc.in and
configure.ac.  I do get one error message, however, from bootstrap.sh.

configure.ac:770: required file ./config.h.in' not found

Also, no config.h.in (or config.h) is produced.

The workaround was to put touch config.h.in in bootstrap.sh.  Once that was
done, there were absolutely no messages from bootstrap.sh which is a first
for me, and quite encouraging.

I then went on with configure; make; make install, and all was well with
plplot-test.sh (produced identical postscript to 5.2.0).

So I am committing it because it is no worse than before, and I like the fact
that all those stupid warnings are gone.  BTW, have a look at
Rafael's extensive comments in the include/plConfig.in.h log for the AM-LT
branch.  (That file existed on that branch for a while before it was deleted
for that branch.  Apparently when I used cvs add on the current file, the
state information is okay since I can retrieve it from CVS without problems.)
Rafael's cvs log comments are very similar to recent threads explaining why
the bizarre touch command has to be used in ./bootstrap.sh, etc.

Now for the bad news.  The current commit does not solve the fundamental
problem that started all this thread:

Right in the middle of my initial make:

cd .. && /bin/sh /home/software/plplot_cvs/HEAD/plplot/missing --run autoheader touch ./plDevs.h.in

UGH!

Part of what is going on is the CVS date of ./plDevs.h.in is fixed in
December.  So this touch occurs when you first make, and you are okay until
the next time you do a CVS update (which I believe restores the old date).
plConfig.h.in is currently okay because the CVS date is today.  But if
configure.ac is updated again, then make will assume plConfig.h.in is
out of date and will run autoheader on it as well.

Note, I am no longer using the Debian autotools which have been patched
extensively by the Debian packager to allow a combination of old and new
autoconf stuff.  Instead, in the interests of making sure we all have the
same autotools versions, I have been using the latest stable releases of
everything, (autoconf-2.57, automake-1.7.2, and libtool-1.4.3) which I
downloaded from FSF and built from scratch.

I think we have clearly run up against a bug in autoconf since autoheader is
not supposed to be run on those files at all.  (It is only supposed to be
used to generate files from scratch such as config.h.in, not modify existing
files, and besides these are the second and third files in the list for
AC_CONFIG_HEADERS, and the documentation says autoheader should only be
invoked for the first file.)

Rafael, in your first post you had a suggestion for supressing autoheader
altogether.  Perhaps it is time to try that as a workaround for the bug. But
I am amazed (a) this problem hasn't bitten most of the many projects that
are using autoconf and cvs together, and (b) the resulting outcry didn't
generate strong motivation for a quick fix.

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 Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

[Plplot-devel] New simplified python configuration

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

I have decided to take advantage of the AM_PATH_PYTHON macro results in order
to simplify our python configuration.  Also, I straightened out some
single/double logic in bindings/python/Makefile.am that would fail in certain
peculiar instances.  Thanks, Rafael, for pointing out that problem.

These commits work on Debian woody. Please give this a thorough testing on
as many Unix/Linux python platforms that you have access to.  I don't want
to repeat the experience of having to put my head in a brown paper bag after
the next release....;-)

If you have some strange location for the python include directory, then you
should set the environment variable PYTHON_INC_DIR appropriately before
configuration.  But normally, sysloc.in should find this directory.  There
is also the opportunity to set PYTHON_INSTDIR to the *full* directory where
the plplot python wrapper scripts and extension modules will be installed,
but normally the right thing is done so you don't have to worry about that.

All other plplot/python-related environment variables (PYTHON_MOD_DIR,
PYTHON_CFG_DIR, PYTHON_NUM_DIR, and PYTHON_MACH_DIR) that you could
previously specify before running configure are no longer relevant.

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 Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

Re: [Plplot-devel] Aspirin for autoheadache

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

* Rafael Laboissiere <lab...@ps...> [2003-01-30 21:57]:

> And now the good news: I have already an almost working patch to HEAD that
> should fix all (or almost all) autoheader related problems.  I am only
> waiting the #defines list to be kept in plConfig.h to proceed.  Maurice?

The promised patch is attached below.  It is not yet fully test, but at
least bootstrap.sh works (both autoconf and autoheader).  I am also
attaching the new include/plConfig.h.in file, but its contents may change.
acconfig.h must be deleted from and include/plConfig.h.in must be added to
the CVS repository.

Here is a summary of the changes:

    * In configure.ac, AM_CONFIG_HEADER is replaced by AC_CONFIG_HEADERS.
      config.h is now the first element in the arguments list.

    * All AC_DEFINE and AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED macros in configure.ac and
      sysloc.in have now three arguments, as mandated by the autoheader docs.

    * Added at the top of plConfig.h:

         #if HAVE_CONFIG_H
         #  include <config.h>
         #endif

    * The strange call touch plDevs.h in bootstrap.sh has been removed.


Could you please check if this patch is okay?

-- 
Rafael