[BUG] Plots with GR on Mac OS stopped working at all

[kellertuer]

As a continuation of https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plots-broken-on-mac/65551/9 – I am facing a similar issue that I do not seem to be able to resolve (and I am not sure whether its Plots or GR either).

I get the error message

ERROR: LoadError: SystemError: opening file "/var/folders/q4/7mgqym9s5nx0kq4jx_z40wj00000gn/T/jl_AtKYms.png": No such file or directory

when running code with Plots/GR inside

• On both Julia 1.6.0
• On both most recent GR and 0.48
• Mac OS Big Sur (M1)

things I further tried

• deleting all artefacts
• deleting Plots and GR (] rm Plots, GR) and adding them back again
• deleting Juila and installing Julia again

The only thing I can additionally provide, is that on most recent GR, it also prints

objc[12652]: Class RunLoopModeTracker is implemented in both /Users/ronny/.julia/conda/3/lib/libQt5Core.5.9.7.dylib (0x1a97d5a80) and .julia/artifacts/d594d9e68b9d104aaf1a41d933728d2dad54c869/lib/QtCore.framework/Versions/5/QtCore (0x1fef79aa8). One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
GKS: dlopen(.julia/artifacts/04878bfb5e675dcc3270d3beaa04445ac8cba280/lib/../lib/cairoplugin.so, 1): Library not loaded: @rpath/libtiff.5.dylib
  Referenced from: .julia/artifacts/04878bfb5e675dcc3270d3beaa04445ac8cba280/lib/cairoplugin.so
  Reason: Incompatible library version: cairoplugin.so requires version 13.0.0 or later, but libtiff.5.dylib provides version 11.0.0

Backends

GR

This bug occurs on ( insert x below )

Backend	yes	no	untested
gr (default)	x
pyplot
plotly
plotlyjs
pgfplotsx
inspectdr

Versions

Plots.jl version: 1.15.2
Backend version (]st -m <backend(s)>): GR 57.5 (or 0.48 or some in between)
Output of versioninfo():

Julia Version 1.6.2
Commit 1b93d53fc4 (2021-07-14 15:36 UTC)
Platform Info:
  OS: macOS (x86_64-apple-darwin18.7.0)
  CPU: Apple M1
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  LIBM: libopenlibm
  LLVM: libLLVM-11.0.1 (ORCJIT, westmere)

[henrikjaerleblad]

I get the same bug using the GR backend for Plots.jl on Mac, but only when I try to save plot using png(). I used Plots.jl together with the Interact.jl package to create interactable plot widgets in my web browser, hence the 'Error handling websocket connection'. I am using Julia version 1.5.1.

[henrikjaerleblad]

It seems to be working fine when using Julia and Plots.jl in the Mac OS terminal, until you want to save a plot with png().

However, when I try using Plots.jl in Atom, I get the error right away and cannot plot anything.

[henrikjaerleblad]

Alright, I solved the issue by re-installing Julia (and upgrading to 1.6.2) and all my packages. If you don't care why the problem happened, and just want a solution, you can follow this step-by-step solution:

1. Remove Julia from Applications
2. Remove the hidden .julia folder (will remove all packages, environments, dev, pre-compilations etc)
3. Download the binary from https://julialang.org/downloads/ (the macOS 64-bit file, version 1.6.2)
4. Re-install Julia normally (with the downloaded .dmg file etc)
5. Change the PATH variable in your .bash_profile file (should be as simple as changing a '1.5' to '1.6')
6. Start Julia in the MacOS terminal by typing 'julia'
7. If you have been using the PyCall.jl package with your own Python executable, specify the ENV["PYTHON"] as described at https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl already now
8. Manually re-install all your Julia packages via 'Pkg.add()'
9. You should now be good to go!

I also took the opportunity to switch from Atom to VSCode. If you have been using Atom's ftp-remote-edit package, you can find instructions on how to do the equivalent in VSCode here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52085501/how-to-connect-vs-code-via-ftp-with-remote-workspace and here https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=liximomo.sftp .

Instructions on how to get started with Julia in VSCode

• https://www.julia-vscode.org/docs/stable/gettingstarted/
• https://www.julia-vscode.org/docs/stable/userguide/runningcode/

TL;DR One solution is to completely remove Julia and all Julia-related data and re-install everything.

[kellertuer]

Thanks for testing.
Indeed I was running on 1.6.0 and upgraded to 1.6.2 (hoping the ] up would recompile enough things.

I might try deleting the .Julia folder, but I am also both lazy (to set the things up again) and interested in the reason this happens and how one can usually resolve this.

Edit: I today took the short time to delete my .julia folder (but not uninstalling and reinstalling it). That alone did not help.

[kellertuer]

This seems to be the same as #3416, and I could solve it by following the idea there, i.e. installing GR@0.55.0, though I am not sure which of the packages has to be updated in what way to resolve this.

[brandonlivio]

I am facing a similar problem now: I can plot but i cannot save plots with savefig. If I run the following
using Plots plot(1:10) savefig("test.png")

I get

GKS: dlopen(/Users/brandonlivio/.julia/artifacts/4cab0d575711b60d292e4bd3088c55d27752a8ea/lib/cairoplugin.so, 1): Library not loaded: @rpath/libcairo.2.dylib Referenced from: /Users/brandonlivio/.julia/artifacts/4cab0d575711b60d292e4bd3088c55d27752a8ea/lib/cairoplugin.so Reason: Incompatible library version: cairoplugin.so requires version 11603.0.0 or later, but libcairo.2.dylib provides version 2.0.0 "/Users/brandonlivio/test.png"

I have tried everything, even completeley reinstalled julia, added only Plots and the problem persists. I am running on Mac 11.7.10 and using Julia 1.10.5 (the latest stable release)

[t-bltg]

Can you try using plain GR commands (https://github.com/jheinen/GR.jl) and report an upstream bug if it is applicable ?

[brandonlivio]

I get the same error if I run the following code

using GR
histogram(randn(1000))
savefig("test.png")

[t-bltg]

Please open an issue and report the bug in https://github.com/jheinen/GR.jl, as there is nothing we can do about it here in Plots.

[brandonlivio]

Makes sense, thanks