rand(Chi()) and rand(Chisq()) hang in recent julia-0.4

[davidavdav]

Hi,

Since a couple of days, a few of the Univariate distributions cause julia-0.4dev to hang when a random number is requested:

$ julia
Version 0.4.0-dev+1368 (2014-10-31 22:45 UTC)
Commit a25f17d* (1 day old master)

using Distributions
rand(Chisq(1.0), 10)
## nothing happens, no CPU load either, looks like a blocking wait. 

This is the case for at least Chi() and Chisq().

Cheers,

---david

[lindahua]

It is calling the internal r-math library to generate random numbers. Probably recent changes in Julia-0.4 causes the failure of using r-math?

[lindahua]

I verify this problem -- actually everything that relies on Rmath is broken in Julia 0.4 ....

[davidavdav]

Yes, that is probably it. I noticed that my package that depends on Distributions didn't pass Travis for julianightlies on a time-out. My guess is that is is in a recent (less than 7 days) change in Julia.

[ViralBShah]

Fixed by fixing JuliaLang/julia#8874

[lindahua]

Thanks @ViralBShah. Distributions.jl is working on both 0.3 and 0.4 as of now.

[davidavdav]

Thank both of you for picking this up so quickly, now my rand(GMM) works again on nightlies.

[ViralBShah]

Note that the RNGs in Distributions will no longer be synced with the one in Base.