Gnuplot 5.0

[Mojca Miklavec]

Hi,

I need advice what to do with the upgrade to Gnuplot 5.0.
(It's not released yet, but the release is planned very soon.)

There have been some backward-incompatible changes. Most users will
(only?) notice the change of default colours though. I didn't test any
software that depends on gnuplot yet.

In the long run I would prefer to see just a single copy of gnuplot
shipped with MacPorts, but I'm not 100% sure that simply upgrading to
5.0 won't affect users.

I would be inclined towards making a variant that would install
version 4.6 rather than 5.0, so that users experiencing problems with
version 5 could quickly switch back to 4.6 without the need to change
any dependent ports. I know that this is against "common practice",
but in contrast to some libraries, installing a different version of
gnuplot should not have any influence on software that depends on
gnuplot (like octave).

An alternative would be to make several ports (maybe gnuplot and
gnuplot4?) and fix all dependent ports accordingly.

(A Portfile for gnuplot 5.0.rc3 is in SVN, inside
users/mojca/ports/math/gnuplot.)

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Opinions?

Thank you,
    Mojca