#49 'Unable to load shared library 'plplot' or one of its dependencies. - On Mac

[Seth Reid]

I have been trying to get this to work on Mac however I get an error on the following line:

https://github.com/surban/PLplotNet/blob/master/PLplotNet/PLStream.cs#L23

And the following error:

Exception has occurred: CLR/System.DllNotFoundException
An unhandled exception of type 'System.DllNotFoundException' occurred in PLplotNet.dll: 'Unable to load shared library 'plplot' or one of its dependencies. In order to help diagnose loading problems, consider setting the DYLD_PRINT_LIBRARIES environment variable: dlopen(libplplot, 1): image not found'
at PLplot.Native.mkstrm(Int32& p_strm)
at PLplot.PLStream..ctor() in C:\projects\plplotnet\PLplotNet\PLStream.cs:line 24
at myMLNET.Common.Utils.ChartGeneratorUtil.PlotRegressionChart(PlotChartGeneratorModel generationModel) in /Users/seth/dev/ai-school-ml-net-crash-course/Common/Utils/ChartGeneratorUtil.cs:line 15
at myMLNET.LinearRegression.Main(String[] args) in /Users/seth/dev/ai-school-ml-net-crash-course/00.CompleteExamples/02.LinearRegression/Program.cs:line 76

I was able to solve the same issue on Windows by installing the windows build tools for building native modules (e.g. this npm package https://www.npmjs.com/package/windows-build-tools).

However on Mac (with Xcode installed) I don't know how to make it work.

[Alan W. Irwin]

Ticket moved from /p/plplot/bugs/194/

[Alan W. Irwin]

I have changed this from a PLplot bug report to a pending (i.e., waiting for more feedback from you) PLplot support request since I doubt this issue is due to a PLplot bug. Also, it might be a Mac OS X support issue rather than a PLplot one, and I have no direct experience with Mac OS X. That said, I will still try to help you because I have been in contact with PLplot users on Mac OS X so I have picked up indirect knowledge of Mac OS X that way and via google searches.

Question: what version of PLplot are you using?

Homebrew and MacPorts have both packaged 5.14.0 (and Fink has packaged a much older version of PLplot). But whichever of these you are using, PLplot-5.15.0 has just been released, and it includes some rpath fixes that might be relevant to your dynamic loading issue. So I suggest you download that version (which is in source-code form), and build and test it for yourself using our CMake-based build system. Our test suite includes testing dynamic loads of language binding dll's that are linked to the plplot library so that is similar enough to what you are attempting, that you can probably be confident if you get our comprehensive test to work (see <https://sourceforge.net/p/plplot/wiki/Testing_PLplot/) then the problem above that you are having with dynamic loading of the plplot library can be easily resolved (say by setting DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH if the rpath fixes in 5.15.0 are not sufficient).