PlotlyJS doesn't work without ORCA installed

[adamsiembida]

The "Saving figures" section in the index page of the documentation says that

"If you would like to save your figures to files in a format other than json and html, you will need to install the ORCA.jl pacakge."

I was getting an error that ORCA isn't installed by trying to run using PlotlyJS. Until I installed ORCA, I wasn't able to use PlotlyJS. According to the documentation, it seems to imply that you only need ORCA.jl if you plan on saving figures.

[sglyon]

Hmm that should not happen.

You should be able to call using PlotlyJS without installing ORCA. can you provide more information on your setup? Info like the version of Julia, version of PlotlyJS, operating system, etc,

[adamsiembida]

can you provide more information on your setup? Info like the version of Julia, version of PlotlyJS, operating system, etc,

I just tried reproducing this and wasn't able to. I know I had the issue on both of my computers (Laptop and Desktop). Both of them are running Windows 10 and julia 1.0.1. The version of PlotlyJS is v0.11.2.

I'm still getting familiarized with the new Pkg tool, so I don't know all the ins and outs of how packages are installed. I even tried deleting the ORCA and PlotlyJS folders from .julia\compiled and .julia\packages and running gc, then creating a new environment. Maybe I did something weird that caused this issue and didn't realize it.

I don't know if there is anything else left to "purge" to bring to back to the pre-install state, so I'm willing to try something if you have some idea. Otherwise, maybe it was just a false alarm.

[adamsiembida]

I did some more testing and realized that the ORCA issue I described in the original post doesn't happen upon doing using PlotlyJS. It happens when I am trying to use Plots.jl and it happens after running plotlyjs() to enable the backend. I dont' know if that is intended behavior or not, but that is probably a Plots issue, and not a PlotlyJS issue.

Plots is v0.20.6.

julia> plotlyjs()
ERROR: ArgumentError: Package ORCA not found in current path:
- Run `import Pkg; Pkg.add("ORCA")` to install the ORCA package.

[ederag]

Same here, with PlotlyJS v0.11.2 Plots v0.21.0 Looks like ORCA is neither in PlotlyJS.jl nor in Plots.jl dependencies.

[sglyon]

I'm sorry, this is likely an issue with Plots.jl.

@ederag you are right about this. ORCA is meant to be an optional dependency that is loaded via Requires.jl -- meaning if you have both installed and call using PlotlyJS and using ORCA, the integration code will be evaluated. Until both packages are installed and loaded, that code is not executed.

[juliohm]

If this issue is really not in PlotlyJS.jl itself, but in Plots.jl I think we can close it?

The ORCA issue is quite annoying though and I wonder if the conclusion made in the corresponding Plots.jl issue linked above is satisfactory.