On 2010-12-16 08:40+0100 Arjen Markus wrote: > Hi Alan, > > okay, at the very least this error is consistent, so that should make > it easier to hunt down. I think I have some opportunity tonight to > further investigate this and other Windows matters. Will keep you > posted.
Hi Arjen: As in all debugging the essential is to simplify as much as possible while still demonstrating the bug. Here are some steps of that simplification process that I have been able to do so far. It leads to a rather improbable hypothesis.... First run comprehensive_test.sh so that "can't open" error shows up in the comprehensive_test.sh build tree, /z/home/wine/newstart/plplot_comprehensive_test_disposable1/shared/build_tree. If after that bad wine result, I set all appropriate environment variables, cd to examples/tcl in the above tree then run echo $(pwd)/test1.ps |pltcl x14 -dev psc -o test.ps Demo of multiple output streams via the psc driver. Running with the second stream as slave to the first. Enter graphics output file name: Can't open /z/home/wine/newstart/plplot_comprehensive_test_disposable1/shared/build_tree/examples/tcl/test1.ps. .... I then tried the same thing in the corresponding c example, and got the same (bad) result. I then tried ./x10c -dev psc -o $(pwd)/test.ps and echo test1.ps| ./x14c -dev psc -o $(pwd)/test.ps and the long filename specified with -o worked fine! I then tried interactive input of the long file name, and that generated the error. ./x10c -dev psc Enter graphics output file name: /z/home/wine/newstart/plplot_comprehensive_test_disposable1/shared/build_tree/examples/c/test.ps Can't open /z/home/wine/newstart/plplot_comprehensive_test_disposable1/shared/build_tree/examples/c/test.ps. ... This is the simplest instance of the error I have been able to generate so far. I then tried many of the same examples under Linux and could not reproduce the error at all no matter how long I made the full path to the file, e.g., echo $(pwd)/../../../../shared/build_tree/examples/c/test1.ps /home/software/plplot_svn/HEAD/plplot_cmake_qt/comprehensive_test_disposeable/shared/build_tree/examples/c/../../../../shared/build_tree/examples/c/test1.ps The bad C results on wine show the error has nothing to do with Tcl which is a nice simplification, but the corresponding good results on Linux show it must be some Windows-specific issue. On the other hand, the good C results using the -o option on wine prove bash and C and PLplot can handle long filenames on wine with no issues. Thus, all the symptoms are consistent with the hypothesis that for the special case where the user must be prompted for a filename, the C (and Tcl) examples call a PLplot function to open the file in a peculiar way which has a Windows-specific filename length limitation. That hypothesis does seem pretty improbable if you think about it, but as Sherlock Holmes said: "Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth." That should be enough experimentation, and it is now time to start debugging the code to see whether the above hypothesis is true. Fortunately, MSYS gives you access to the gcc debugger, gdb, which is an excellent tool for debugging. More later as this detective story unfolds. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lotusphere 2011 Register now for Lotusphere 2011 and learn how to connect the dots, take your collaborative environment to the next level, and enter the era of Social Business. http://p.sf.net/sfu/lotusphere-d2d _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
