On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Patrick Rynhart<prynh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> We are using Python 2.5, matplotlib and NumPy on Windows to assist
> with the teaching for an undergraduate paper.  On a small number of
> installations, an error attempting to load some required DLL's is
> being reported (on approx 3 machines out of approximately 60).  There
> doesn't appear to be any pattern with this - we can seen it on one
> install of Windows Server 2008 and also on various versions of Windows
> XP (Professional and Home).
>
> Symptoms are, after a "from pylab import *", the following traceback:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>  File "C:\Documents and
> Settings\Jo\workspace\test\src\root\nested\__init__.py", line 2, in
> <module>
>    from pylab import *
>  File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\pylab.py", line 1, in <module>
>    from matplotlib.pylab import *
>  File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\pylab.py", line 206,
> in <module>
>    from matplotlib import mpl  # pulls in most modules
>  File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\mpl.py", line 1, in <module>
>    from matplotlib import artist
>  File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\artist.py", line 4, in 
> <module>
>    from transforms import Bbox, IdentityTransform, TransformedBbox,
> TransformedPath
>  File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\transforms.py", line
> 34, in <module>
>    from matplotlib._path import affine_transform
> ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

We have seen this problem several times  before, and have labored hard
to banish it, but it always has a way of coming back to haunt us.  I
am aware of a bug in python2.6 which causes mingw to build broken
win32 binaries, but am not aware of such  a problem w/ python2.5,
which you appear to be using.  We often use a program called
dependency walker to track these problems down:

  http://www.dependencywalker.com/

Open the problematic file (it should be
C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\_path.pyd) and report any
errors you find here; it should tell you which DLLs are missing.
Search the good and the bad boxes for these DLL filenames and see if
it is a difference in the boxes, eg do the good boxes have the DLL and
the bad boxes not, and if so maybe you can figure out why (different
version in the OS patch level?).  I am really interested to know the
difference in the boxes because it may give us the critical clue as to
why some users report this problem and others do not see it.

Also, on one of the bad boxes, could you try the new 0.99 release and
let me know if you have the same issue?

I build the python2.5 installers with mingw; Christoph builds the
python2.6 installers with Visual Studio precisely because mingw is
broken on python2.6.  If we can't banish this bug on 2.5 w/ mingw, I
may have to lean on his generosity and ask him to make a python2.5
installer with Visual Studio as well.

JDH

PS: rereading your email, I see you are using 0.98.3.  The first time
I read it, when I wrote the response above, I thought you were using
0.98.5.3 -- the .3 at the end tricked me.  The latter is fairly
recent, and came out 10 months after 0.98.3, and we did several things
to fix exactly this dll problem in interim.  At a minimum, you need to
be testing and installing 0.98.5.3.  This is a very stable, bug fix
release, suitable for use in the classroom.  I can't guarantee you
won't hit the same problem, but at least you will be using a version
that *shouldn't* have it, though I am still interested in the results
of the dependency walker tests above, because I have wasted so much
time trying to fix these win32 installers.

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