[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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