[BUG] Using PackageCompiler with Plots fails for newer versions of Plots

[ufechner7]

julia> versioninfo()
Julia Version 1.8.5
Commit 17cfb8e65ea (2023-01-08 06:45 UTC)
Platform Info:
  OS: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
  CPU: 8 × Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  LIBM: libopenlibm
  LLVM: libLLVM-13.0.1 (ORCJIT, skylake)
  Threads: 1 on 8 virtual cores

Test script:

using Plots
p = plot(rand(2,2))
display(p)

Commands to create system image:

using PackageCompiler
create_sysimage(["Plots"], sysimage_path="sys_plots.so", precompile_execution_file="precompile_plots.jl")

If I now launch julia with:

julia -J sys_plots.so --project

and then try to create a plot with:

using Plots
p = plot(rand(2,2))
display(p)

I get the following text output:

Plot{Plots.GRBackend() n=2}

But no plot window is popping up.

This bug is present with the following packages:

(Bug) pkg> st
Status `~/repos/Bug/Project.toml`
  [28b8d3ca] GR v0.71.6
  [9b87118b] PackageCompiler v2.1.5
  [91a5bcdd] Plots v1.38.5

But disappears if I downgrade Plots.jl to version v1.36.6.

Releated bug: JuliaLang/PackageCompiler.jl#786

[t-bltg]

What does gui(p) report ?

From the looks of it, if 1.36.6 worked, it might be an effect of #4566, which got introduced in 1.37.0.

Also, please report:

julia> Plots.PlotsDisplay() in Base.Multimedia.displays
true

[ufechner7]

gui(p) is actually displaying the plot.

julia> Plots.PlotsDisplay() in Base.Multimedia.displays
true

[t-bltg]

It seems that the position of PlotsDisplay in Base.Multimedia.displays might be faulty in your case (see https://github.com/JuliaPlots/Plots.jl/blob/master/src/init.jl#L36-L55).

From Base.display docs:

Display x using the topmost applicable display in the display stack, typically using the richest supported multimedia output for x, with plain-text [stdout](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/io-network/#Base.stdout) output as a fallback.

You might want to play with inserting PlotsDisplay in Base.Multimedia.displays, or maybe running Plots.__init__() would work in your case.

At least, you have a workaround using gui or you could define: Base.display(plt::Plots.Plot) = Plots.gui(plt) as a workaround.

But honestly I don't think we will be working on a fix since this is PackageCompiler related, and we never supported this kind of usage ...

[ufechner7]

I had a similar problem with Bokeh.jl which was fixed pretty fast: cjdoris/Bokeh.jl#19

And I think it would be nice if the use of Plots with PackageCompiler would be supported, I think a lot of people use them together...

[t-bltg]

Well, if you got a fix for that, make a PR :)

[ufechner7]

Workaround:

using Plots
Plots.__init__()

p = plot(rand(2,2))
display(p)

Call Plots.__init__() after "using Plots"...