Crashes caused by replace wave dialog

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Wed, 11/30/2011 - 03:14 am

Over a long time period (say a couple years), I've noticed that Igor is reeeaally crash-y when you use the "Replace Wave..." dialog to swap out one image for another in a graph. I was first noticing this on various Windows machines (both 32 and 64-bit), and now after switching to a Mac, I still see it. It's so bad that I always (read: frequently) save my work just before trying anything with this function, even if doing backups so frequently can cost me many, many minutes due to the large datasets I am often manipulating.

The behavior is pretty quirky. The crashes only come when replacing images, not traces. And it (usually?) doesn't occur when you hit the "Do" button, like you'd expect. Instead, it seems to happen when you're browsing in the drop-down menu for the image wave you want to replace the current one with.

I always kinda figured that the WM guys knew about this and had it on the back burner, but it's been a long time... so maybe not??? Have others noticed the same issues, and could a fix be on the way?
I'm sorry that Igor is crashing on you. We usually fix crashes that we can reproduce within a day or two, so no, this isn't something that is on the back burner.

You don't say what version of Igor you are using. I suggest you update your Igor to the latest shipping version (6.22A) if you aren't there already. Do that by using the Help->Updates menu. Then, I suggest you download the latest nightly build of the application from http://www.wavemetrics.net/Downloads/latest/ (instructions are on that page for how to use it). I don't remember us fixing any crashes in the Replace Waves dialog since our last official release, but we have fixed a number of crashes in other places. The fact that you say the crash happens while browsing for a wave suggests that the crash may not be specific to the Replace Waves dialog.

It's difficult for us to fix a crash that we can't reproduce ourselves. So if you can send us a recipe that reliably reproduces the crash we should be able to fix it. If you come up with a recipe, please also send us any experiment or procedure files we need to use to follow your recipe. It's best to send that all to support@wavemetrics.com instead of posting here (actually, all crash reports should be sent directly to us so that we can make sure they go to the programmer responsible for the crash). If you get the crash on Macintosh, please also send us the crash log (click the Report button in the dialog that the system puts up after a crash, and copy the full text in that window and email it to us). Note that using the Apple crash reporting tool doesn't actually send the report to us (and Apple doesn't send it along to us either).

If you can't give us a detailed recipe, it would help if you could at least provide as many details as possible about what you were doing and the state of the dialog.

In the future, if Igor crashes and you can reproduce the crash, send us the recipe and we will do our best to fix the crash.

November 30, 2011 at 07:18 am - Permalink

Now that I'm at work, I was able to get a crash myself in the Replace Waves dialog. I'm investigating and will post here when we fix it.

November 30, 2011 at 08:42 am - Permalink

It looks like the crash is happening when the user clicks in a blank area of the wave popup browser. This causes no waves to be selected, and that causes the crash. So a temporary workaround would be to make sure that you never click anywhere but on a wave name. But this should be pretty easy to fix so I don't think you'll need the workaround for long.

November 30, 2011 at 10:58 am - Permalink

Thank you for your report. It turns out to be much too easy to have no selection for a replacement wave; in the case of both images and contours the result was a crash. I have now fixed the problem, and you can get a fixed executable tomorrow from our nightly build:

http://www.wavemetrics.net/Downloads/latest/

I have also added an error message for that situation, and added an error message for the situation of missing replacement wave for a regular graph trace as well.
Quote:
I always kinda figured that the WM guys knew about this and had it on the back burner, but it's been a long time... so maybe not??? Have others noticed the same issues, and could a fix be on the way?

Igor should never crash; we try to fix crashes as soon as we know about them, typically the same day we get the report if we can reproduce it. So, no, it wasn't on the back burner. I suspect few people use the Replace Wave dialog for images or contours, and that's why we haven't fixed it previously.

Again, thank you for taking the time to report the crash.

John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com

November 30, 2011 at 11:31 am - Permalink

Wow. Went to bed, woke up, went to meetings, had lunch, came back, issue resolved. Very nice work guys. Thanks. I'll be testing out the new build in just a few moments. [Guess I should have brought this up a long time ago :-) .]

December 1, 2011 at 06:55 am - Permalink