Re: [Plplot-devel] [Plplot-general] MinGW Make Trouble

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2010-02-10 20:39+0100 Werner Smekal wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi,
>
>>
>> Werner, your combined knowledge of windows and CMake makes you the obvious
>> candidate to ask Windows-related questions in an informed way on the CMake
>> list. Therefore, would you please ask on that list whether there is a way
>> for cmake to set up Windows builds to allow dll's to be found or is it a
>> necessity to externally set the PATH?
>
> If a executable is run and a dll is needed, Windows looks first in the
> current directory for the dll. Then in the PATH. Then in
> c:\windows\system32 (and in some other system directories. Maybe PATH
> comes later, but this doesn't matter). Since we don't want to copy the
> dlls multiple times, our only chance is to change the PATH environment
> variable. I just read the cmake documentation about setting environment
> variables
> (http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#command:set) and it
> should be possible to change the PATH variable that way. Presumably only
> as long as the Terminal window is open (so at least for the cmake
> configure stage). If you close the terminal, start it again this change
> is surely gone and I assume, if you then compile plplot (which is
> already configured) PATH won't be changed again, so you run into
> problems again. So this is no solution.

I think you must be right.  This is the issue (environment variable
set in cmake not available for build) that I referred to based on
my Linux experience with environment variables.

>
> Actually there are two problems.
>
> 1) plplot build is not finished, since testing the rc files fails, due
> to the "missing" dlls. I would suggest that for windows we force that
> the test-drv-info executable will be built into the dll folder (where
> for windows all dlls are gathered). Therefore the build gets through
> (since the dlls are in the same folder than test-drv-info).

Please go ahead with that.

>
> 2) The examples don't run, since the dlls are not found. Now you need to
> either set the PATH variable or copy the dlls. User interaction is
> needed, the dlls are in the dll directory and the examples are in the
> examples directory, and this shouldn't be changed. So IMO the best we
> can do is, that in summary.cmake we add at the end a message (with many
> !) if it's a shared build on Windows and examples are built as well,
> the user is asked to add the dll directory to the PATH variable.

Please go ahead with that.  Also, please implement a similar message for the
new CMake-based build system for the installed examples.  See the summary
message at the end of examples/CMakeLists.txt.

>
> I believe the most Windows developers know about what to do, if they run
> a program and a message box pops up telling him that the dll is missing.
>
> Still not perfect, but on the other hand it's not possible to cover
> everything. If the user wants to compile his own executables, he *must*
> take care of the dlls anyway. So if he doesn't RTFM it's best he gets
> into trouble trying to run the examples already. It would be more
> confusing if the examples run and his own programs not.

Agreed.

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
__

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Re: [Plplot-devel] [Plplot-general] MinGW Make Trouble

[Werner Smekal]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hi,

> 
> Werner, your combined knowledge of windows and CMake makes you the obvious
> candidate to ask Windows-related questions in an informed way on the CMake
> list. Therefore, would you please ask on that list whether there is a way
> for cmake to set up Windows builds to allow dll's to be found or is it a
> necessity to externally set the PATH?

If a executable is run and a dll is needed, Windows looks first in the
current directory for the dll. Then in the PATH. Then in
c:\windows\system32 (and in some other system directories. Maybe PATH
comes later, but this doesn't matter). Since we don't want to copy the
dlls multiple times, our only chance is to change the PATH environment
variable. I just read the cmake documentation about setting environment
variables
(http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#command:set) and it
should be possible to change the PATH variable that way. Presumably only
as long as the Terminal window is open (so at least for the cmake
configure stage). If you close the terminal, start it again this change
is surely gone and I assume, if you then compile plplot (which is
already configured) PATH won't be changed again, so you run into
problems again. So this is no solution.

Actually there are two problems.

1) plplot build is not finished, since testing the rc files fails, due
to the "missing" dlls. I would suggest that for windows we force that
the test-drv-info executable will be built into the dll folder (where
for windows all dlls are gathered). Therefore the build gets through
(since the dlls are in the same folder than test-drv-info).

2) The examples don't run, since the dlls are not found. Now you need to
either set the PATH variable or copy the dlls. User interaction is
needed, the dlls are in the dll directory and the examples are in the
examples directory, and this shouldn't be changed. So IMO the best we
can do is, that in summary.cmake we add at the end a message (with many
!) if it's a shared build on Windows and examples are built as well,
the user is asked to add the dll directory to the PATH variable.

I believe the most Windows developers know about what to do, if they run
a program and a message box pops up telling him that the dll is missing.

Still not perfect, but on the other hand it's not possible to cover
everything. If the user wants to compile his own executables, he *must*
take care of the dlls anyway. So if he doesn't RTFM it's best he gets
into trouble trying to run the examples already. It would be more
confusing if the examples run and his own programs not.

Regards,
Werner

> 
> 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
> __
> 
> --
> SOLARIS 10 is the OS for Data Centers - provides features such as DTrace,
> Predictive Self Healing and Award Winning ZFS. Get Solaris 10 NOW
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/solaris-dev2dev
> ___
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel


- -- 
Dr. Werner Smekal
Institut fuer Angewandte Physik
Technische Universitaet Wien
Wiedner Hauptstr 8-10/134
A-1040 Wien
Austria
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email: sme...@iap.tuwien.ac.at  (GPG: EDCAF4A79)
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Re: [Plplot-devel] [Plplot-general] MinGW Make Trouble

[Alan W. Irwin]

Hi Hazen:

My response below is mostly directed to you, but Werner should note there is
a question for him at the end.

On 2010-02-10 11:27-0500 Hazen Babcock wrote:

> David Mertens wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Hazen Babcock > > wrote:
>>
>> The problem is that the dll's that it made are not in your PATH. If
>> you look in your build directory there should be a folder called
>> "dll". Once you add that to PATH you should be able to build ok.
>>
>>
>> Hazen, that worked!  Thanks!  Upon closer inspection of the wiki, I see
>> that it mentions setting up the path, but I didn't realize how critical
>> that would be.  I will continue to mess around with this and get back to
>> y'all with questions as they arise.
>
> Any thoughts on configuring the build to automatically change PATH on
> windows to include the dll directory?

I think that is an excellent goal, but I am not sure how you could implement
it.  The problem is that it's usual for changes in environment variables to
affect the current environment and for programmes called from the current
environment, but nothing else.

For example, the CMake documentation says you can, e.g.,

set( ENV{PATH} /home/martink )

but I think that would only work during the time when the cmake command was
being run but would not affect the subsequent build.  Of course, I could
be wrong so you might want to try some experiments to see what is possible.

Werner, your combined knowledge of windows and CMake makes you the obvious
candidate to ask Windows-related questions in an informed way on the CMake
list. Therefore, would you please ask on that list whether there is a way
for cmake to set up Windows builds to allow dll's to be found or is it a
necessity to externally set the PATH?

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
__

--
SOLARIS 10 is the OS for Data Centers - provides features such as DTrace,
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Re: [Plplot-devel] [Plplot-general] MinGW Make Trouble

[Hazen Babcock]

David Mertens wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Hazen Babcock  > wrote:
> 
> The problem is that the dll's that it made are not in your PATH. If
> you look in your build directory there should be a folder called
> "dll". Once you add that to PATH you should be able to build ok.
> 
> 
> Hazen, that worked!  Thanks!  Upon closer inspection of the wiki, I see 
> that it mentions setting up the path, but I didn't realize how critical 
> that would be.  I will continue to mess around with this and get back to 
> y'all with questions as they arise.

Any thoughts on configuring the build to automatically change PATH on 
windows to include the dll directory? Is this only a issue with mingw?

-Hazen


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