Here is the status of the planned release of 5.12.0. I. One of the major improvements for 5.12.0 is the new Fortran binding, and Arjen and I thought we were completely done with that implementation when we got good test results for both gfortran and ifort months ago. However, two months ago, Wadud Miah demonstrated that the new Fortran binding would not build on Linux for the nagfor compiler (which has the reputation of being the most standards-compliant Fortran compiler available). One issue that absorbed a lot of Arjen's time and which will likely need to be addressed after 5.12.0 is release is that CMake does not yet have proper support for the nagfor compiler on Windows. Fortunately, Arjen does have access to Linux (where CMake does support nagfor) and was able to sort out the large number of standards compliancy issues discovered in our Fortran binding by that compiler. Near the end of Arjen's work, it became apparent that we needed a massive style change for our Fortran binding that would remove some 600 lines of duplicated code from it. I have just now completed that style change, and the result gives perfect comprehensive tests results on Linux with gfortran. So the current status for I. is we are essentially done with the new Fortran binding, but Arjen still has to do comprehensive Fortran testing on his 4 different Fortran platforms (nagfor/Linux, gfortran/Cygwin, gfortran/MinGW-w64/MSYS2, and ifort/MSVC) to confirm that my massive style change has not introduced any errors or new warning issues. And once that is completed, we will also ask Wadud to run the comprehensive Fortran test on his own Linux platform and also evaluate the new Fortran binding again for his own Fortran plotting purposes.
II. One of the major improvements planned for 5.12.0 is to greatly improve our DocBook documentation including making it much less specific to C and including a complete update of the Fortran chapter. I have made a lot of progress on this topic, and I hope to merge the results to master within a week. III. Arjen has also been working on his project to support only the redacted argument lists in Tcl. My understanding is that topic is almost completely matured so the prospects of getting this into 5.12.0 are good. IV. I have a number of additional topics on my ToDo list so I may be able to squeeze some of those in during the one-month Fortran test period (see below). V. Other topics merged by our other active developers during the Fortran test period? Please let me know of any plans you may have in this regard. VI. Fortran test period. Once I and II have been completed, then I plan to publicly ask on the plplot-general mailing list for all interested Fortran users of PLplot (supported by our new documentation) to (i) run the comprehensive Fortran test on their platform of choice, and/or (ii) to evaluate the new Fortran binding for their own plotting purposes. I assume this whole Fortran test period will take something like a month. Thus, I plan to freeze merges of major topic branches to the master branch roughly one month from now (end of July), and after comprehensive testing and debugging of any issues found during that testing, release based on that master branch a couple of weeks (mid August) after that. N.B. the ETA for both those release milestones depends critically on how much participation we get for the Fortran testing month and how much effort will be required to fix any Fortran binding bugs found during that testing. However, I am hoping that our nagfor experience has flushed out most if not all our remaining Fortran binding bugs so that we will be able to stick fairly closely to those two ETA's. 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); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); 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 __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Attend Shape: An AT&T Tech Expo July 15-16. Meet us at AT&T Park in San Francisco, CA to explore cutting-edge tech and listen to tech luminaries present their vision of the future. This family event has something for everyone, including kids. Get more information and register today. http://sdm.link/attshape _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
