[MacPorts] #16440: pdftk is unstable

MacPorts noreply at macports.org
Tue Sep 2 00:13:09 PDT 2008


#16440: pdftk is unstable
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  Reporter:  helge at mellvik.no  |       Owner:  ryandesign at macports.org
      Type:  defect            |      Status:  new                    
  Priority:  Normal            |   Milestone:  Port Bugs              
 Component:  ports             |     Version:  1.6.0                  
Resolution:                    |    Keywords:  pdftk                  
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Comment(by helge at mellvik.no):

 Replying to [comment:2 ryandesign@…]:
 > Because gcj34 and gcc34 are old and don't build on our supported
 versions of Mac OS X, I removed support for those build mechanisms in
 r38135. The port still builds fine with gcc41 or gcc42.
 >
 > I still find myself using pdftk on occasion, and although I have been a
 little concerned that there has not been a release in almost two years, it
 still works for me, so I don't want to remove it.
 >
 > I'm not aware of the "obsolete I/O mechanisms", "other problems" or
 "erratic behaviour" you refer to. Can you be more specific?


 Yez, pdftk builds, and it works most of the time, but I'm seeing the same
 problems that I had on Fedora9: Crashes when run from the command line and
 hangs when run from a (CGI or similar) script.

 I'm not familiar with C++ and Java, but it is my impression (from the
 links below) that pdftk uses unsupported and 'unrecommended' i/o- and
 exception-mechanisms, which may be the reason for the problems - and the
 fact that pdftk support has been removed from Fedora and other distros. I
 have noticed from debug-traces that all I/O in pdftk takes one system call
 per byte, extremely inefficient and possibly part of the problem.

 Here are the links I collected when trying to get pdftk running on fedora9
 earlier this year (no success). I moved to a PPC macmini, which has gcj3.4
 and no problems, but when I upgraded to a new dual core Intel macmini, the
 problems were back. As a temporary solution I am running the ppc-version
 of pdftk on the intel machine. Sloooow, but safe.

 I'm sure you will get more from these links than I did.

 http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=35689
 http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/java/2008-03/msg00032.html

 It is interesting that we're seeing the same symptoms on Fedora and
 Leopard, and that the behaviour is different when run from a script (no
 attached terminal) and from an interactive shell. It caused me to look for
 quota and other resource related issues, in particular after discovering
 the 1 byte per I/O behaviour. I found nothing, made some changes to the
 C++ code in order to reduce the problem, and no progress, so I ran out of
 time and gave up.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/16440#comment:3>
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