ENH: Extended the plot_directive to deal with non-linear plotting examples.

[pelson]

Without this, it isn't possible to render:

def main():
    plt.plot(range(4))
    plt.show()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

without the caching mechanism getting tripped up by the fact that only one image is produced.

[mdboom]

Isn't it the case that no plot is produced in the example, since __name__ != __main__ in the context in which it's run?

I worry about looking specifically for plt.show(), since there's all kinds of other ways that could get called. But I don't quite understand the problem here to begin with -- maybe there's another way to solve it.

[pelson]

Isn't it the case that no plot is produced in the example, since name != main in the context in which it's run?

No, these run just fine for me. Probably because of https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/blob/master/lib/matplotlib/sphinxext/plot_directive.py#L517

I worry about looking specifically for plt.show(), since there's all kinds of other ways that could get called.

Agreed. That is already pretty fundamentally required though: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/blob/master/lib/matplotlib/sphinxext/plot_directive.py#L323-L343

[anntzer]

I think the correct fix is to run the code in a context where plt.show is patched to handle all the saving, rather than trying to split the code ourselves -- this should allow arbitrary execution paths to be handled...

[QuLogic]

Well, cartopy uses sphinx-gallery now, so...

[tacaswell]

Closing this as it is ~2 years old and from @QuLogic 's comment I take it that the motivation for this no longer exists.

I suspect @anntzer 's suggestion of patching plt.show is a better way to handle this as well.