Bug 737297

Summary:	Help not working in QtOctave with Octave >= 3.4.0
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	TNO-reg
Component:	qtoctave	Assignee:	Kevin Kofler <kevin>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	15	CC:	alekcejk, chitlesh, kevin
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	qtoctave-0.10.1-7.fc15	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2011-10-09 06:57:44 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description TNO-reg 2011-09-10 20:22:46 UTC

Description of problem:

It is impossible to view Octave help via QtOctave graphical interface now for some reason.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 0.10.1-3.fc15


How reproducible: always


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Press F1 or select 'Help --> Octave help'
  
Actual results:

The help window does not show up. The Octave Terminal window in QtOctave reads the following:

>>> qtinfo
Starting info: qtoctave-info-reader /usr/share/info/octave.info > /dev/null
>>>error: system: can't return output from commands run asynchronously
error: called from:
error:   /usr/share/qtoctave/scripts_octave/qtinfo.m at line 4, column 2

Expected results: Well, obviously the help must work as it used to do.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Kevin Kofler 2011-09-10 21:06:14 UTC

Looks like this stopped working with the latest version of Octave. :-(

Unfortunately, QtOctave upstream is no longer active, so I'm not sure when and even if we can fix this.

Comment 2 Kevin Kofler 2011-10-06 22:47:27 UTC

So actually, the problem there is quite obvious:
system(command, 1, "async");
in qtinfo.m makes no sense. We can't return the stdout of a command run asynchronously, because we return before any stdout is produced. Apparently old versions of Octave didn't complain about this, but the current one does. In this case, stdout is piped to /dev/null anyway, so the argument to return stdout is just nonsense. I'm changing this to:
system(command, 0, "async");

Comment 3 Fedora Update System 2011-10-06 23:50:03 UTC

qtoctave-0.10.1-7.fc16 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 16.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/qtoctave-0.10.1-7.fc16

Comment 4 Fedora Update System 2011-10-06 23:50:43 UTC

qtoctave-0.10.1-7.fc15 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 15.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/qtoctave-0.10.1-7.fc15

Comment 5 Fedora Update System 2011-10-06 23:52:25 UTC

qtoctave-0.10.1-7.fc14 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 14.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/qtoctave-0.10.1-7.fc14

Comment 6 Kevin Kofler 2011-10-07 17:17:49 UTC

So it looks like this only affects Octave >= 3.4.0. In particular, Fedora 14 with Octave 3.2.4 shouldn't be affected unless you're using a newer Octave. (It is possible to configure QtOctave to use an Octave binary in a non-default location.)

But in any case, the fix is trivial (1 character) and already queued to stable.

Comment 7 Fedora Update System 2011-10-09 06:56:54 UTC

qtoctave-0.10.1-7.fc14 has been pushed to the Fedora 14 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

Comment 8 Fedora Update System 2011-10-09 06:57:44 UTC

qtoctave-0.10.1-7.fc15 has been pushed to the Fedora 15 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

Comment 9 Fedora Update System 2011-10-09 19:33:46 UTC

qtoctave-0.10.1-7.fc16 has been pushed to the Fedora 16 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.