Argument order in Python algorithm functions not stable across OSs

[Martyn Gigg]

Use a stable_sort to define the algorithm function property order.

This ensures that the relative ordering of equivalent values is preserved.

Refs #9781

Changeset: 419a6ed58bcbe44a25edfb0e5b4508f587698e83

[Martyn Gigg]

Branch: ​bugfix/9781_python_function_argument_order

Tester: Systems with gcc 4.7 onwards received a patch to std::sort, ​https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=58437, that caused the order of equivalent values in the sorted list to be different to previous versions of gcc. This is acceptable in this case because the std::sort algorithm does not guarantee to preserve any ordering of equivalent values.

We should have been using a std::stable_sort all along so that the order relative order of the equivalent values would stay the same w.r.t the original list. (or found a better way of dealing with the argument ordering in the first place, but it has survived for 5.5 years!)

Unfortunately this does change the order of some of the optional arguments from what they were in v3.1 but the mandatory ones should stay the same. Our scripts and most user scripts use keyword arguments so they will be unaffected. All of the systemtests/doctests are passing so the expected order for all of those has not changed.

[Nick Draper]

This should be tested on a system with GCC >= 4.7

[Michael Reuter]

Checked Fedora 20 and RHEL6 via builds and Windows and OSX via kits and the argument ordering between them is all consistent now.

[Michael Reuter]

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/bugfix/9781_python_function_argument_order'

Full changeset: ​da00765a814b9d23df78b2313dcaf28dc671c2df

[Stuart Campbell]

This ticket has been transferred to github issue ​10623