Better solution for graphviz executable

[jakirkham]

Currently the graphviz.exe file is installed in Library\bin\graphviz. This causes some complications when people want to call the executable as that is not added to the path. Currently we address that by creating a batch script in Library\bin, which calls the executable in Library\bin\graphviz. This causes issues downstream where we have needed to extra work to call the batch script. Am wondering if there is a better way for us to address this, which would result in less downstream pain.

xref: conda-forge/python-graphviz-feedstock#6
xref: ContinuumIO/anaconda-issues#1666

[jakirkham]

Just to propose a solution here, would it be possible to add a hard link to executables in Library\bin\graphviz to Library\bin or are there challenges with this approach?

[jakirkham]

@ccordoba12, as you are pretty familiar with this problem, do you have any thoughts on this?

[ccordoba12]

The right solution would be to compile Graphviz on Windows, but that seems pretty hard.

The problem with the current approach is that the Graphviz installer that we're repackaging as a conda package comes with a lot of third-party libraries (like Qt4 and zlib), so we need to put its contents on Library\bin\graphviz instead of Library\bin.

So I think the batch script approach is the right one for now (I can't think of a better one). We just need to submit patches to the upstream projects that depend on Graphviz to make them work with batch scripts. That's usually a matter of adding shell=True to the subprocess.call command that calls Graphviz executables.

[ankostis]

I discovered a tough limitation with BAT files: they don't work with UNC cwd.
Should i open a new issue?

[ccordoba12]

No, thanks.

[ankostis]

Note that python-graphviz-8.4 does not suffer from UNC problems because it does not set cwd to the parent of the filepath.

[jakirkham]

So that sounds like a python-graphviz issue and not a graphviz issue. Could you please raise on that feedstock?

[ankostis]

Thank you, i reported it in conda-forge/python-graphviz-feedstock#32 as advised.

I wanted to cast here my -1 vote against batch proxies for the forthcoming 2.40 release.

[Nodd]

sphinx doesn't generate inheritance graphs, if I understand correctly it's because it doesn't support the batch script. Adding Library\bin\graphviz to the path does the trick even if not recommended.

[jakirkham]

Well there was a recent release of Graphviz if someone wants to tackle upgrading ( #46 ) and building from source on Windows ( #11 ).

[jakirkham]

We are now building from source on Windows with PR ( #59 ) 😀