[Python-modules-team] More advice with regard to matplotlib/lenny

[Kumar Appaiah]

Dear DPMT,

This is about matplotlib in Lenny to fix bug #492735. I have
backported the changes, and myself and Sandro verified that the patch
fixes the memory leak, so I uploaded it to
testing-proposed-updates. All fine.

However, the package failed to build on ia64, mips and powerpc due to
a strange problem. Matplotlib has C and C++ components which are
compiled during the build. The strange way the build system works
causes gcc to be used to compile C++ code using gcc as well. This
results in a strange problem when the versions of gcc and g++ on the
buildd are not in sync. See the logs here:

http://buildd.debian.org/~jeroen/status/package.php?p=matplotlib&suite=testing

I asked upstream about this, and they told me that it wasn't their
fault, but that of distutils which uses gcc for C++ as well (they
essentially said something to the effect of "wontfix"). I then
mailed the buildd maintainers to give back the package with an updated
chroot containing equal versions of gcc and g++. However, the
give-back occurred without updation of the chroot, and thus, has
failed more than once on all architectures except arm, where the
buildd in-charge installed the right versions of gcc/g++ before the
give back.

With the current situation, I don't seem to be able to tell the buildd
maintainers to update their chroots, and some queries with regard to
this also made me realize that it isn't wise to assume equal versions
of gcc and g++. So, I propose an inelegant workarond by prepending
CC=g++ before the setup.py call while building the package, which
builds everything using g++. That works perfectly, with the small
problem of this warning:

cc1plus: warning: command line option "-Wstrict-prototypes" is valid for Ada/C/ObjC but not for C++

So, I wanted your suggestion on what would be the right way to fix
this bug.

Thanks!

Kumar
-- 
Kumar Appaiah
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