Running info on pandas.DataFrame with time column doesn't work

Description of the problem

Just noticed that datetime columns being passed into pygmt.info doesn’t work. This follows on from the pandas.DataFrame inputs into pygmt.info functionality added in #574, see also #464 and #562 where the datetime machinery should be more or less implemented.

Full code that generated the error

import pygmt
import pandas as pd

table = pd.DataFrame(data=[1,3,2,5,4], columns=["z"])
table["time"] = pd.date_range(start="2020-01-01", periods=5)

pygmt.info(table=table)

Note that the equivalent gmt command does work on datetime inputs.

!gmt info temp.txt
temp.txt: N = 5	<1/5>	<2020-01-01T00:00:00/2020-01-05T00:00:00>

Full error message

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
GMTCLibError                              Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-6-a9e68c3dc07e> in <module>
----> 1 pygmt.info(table=table)

~/pygmt/pygmt/helpers/decorators.py in new_module(*args, **kwargs)
    235                 if alias in kwargs:
    236                     kwargs[arg] = kwargs.pop(alias)
--> 237             return module_func(*args, **kwargs)
    238 
    239         new_module.aliases = aliases

~/pygmt/pygmt/modules.py in info(table, **kwargs)
    116 
    117         with GMTTempFile() as tmpfile:
--> 118             with file_context as fname:
    119                 arg_str = " ".join(
    120                     [fname, build_arg_string(kwargs), "->" + tmpfile.name]

~/miniconda3/envs/pygmt/lib/python3.7/contextlib.py in __enter__(self)
    110         del self.args, self.kwds, self.func
    111         try:
--> 112             return next(self.gen)
    113         except StopIteration:
    114             raise RuntimeError("generator didn't yield") from None

~/pygmt/pygmt/clib/session.py in virtualfile_from_matrix(self, matrix)
   1268         )
   1269 
-> 1270         self.put_matrix(dataset, matrix)
   1271 
   1272         with self.open_virtual_file(

~/pygmt/pygmt/clib/session.py in put_matrix(self, dataset, matrix, pad)
    906         )
    907         if status != 0:
--> 908             raise GMTCLibError("Failed to put matrix of type {}.".format(matrix.dtype))
    909 
    910     def write_data(self, family, geometry, mode, wesn, output, data):

GMTCLibError: Failed to put matrix of type object.

System information

Please paste the output of python -c "import pygmt; pygmt.show_versions()":

PyGMT information:
  version: v0.1.2+55.g6deb388
System information:
  python: 3.7.8 | packaged by conda-forge | (default, Jul 31 2020, 02:25:08)  [GCC 7.5.0]
  executable: ~/miniconda3/envs/pygmt/bin/python
  machine: Linux-4.19.0-8-amd64-x86_64-with-debian-10.5
Dependency information:
  numpy: 1.19.1
  pandas: 1.1.1
  xarray: 0.16.0
  netCDF4: 1.5.3
  packaging: 20.4
  ghostscript: 9.27
  gmt: None
GMT library information:
  binary dir: ~/miniconda3/envs/pygmt/bin
  cores: 2
  grid layout: rows
  library path: ~/miniconda3/envs/pygmt/lib/libgmt.so
  padding: 2
  plugin dir: ~/miniconda3/envs/pygmt/lib/gmt/plugins
  share dir: ~/miniconda3/envs/pygmt/share/gmt
  version: 6.1.1

[weiji14]

FYI, https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/gmt/issues/4241 has been magically resolved, so this issue can be resolved when PyGMT bumps the minimum version to GMT 6.2.0!

[maxrjones]

Fixed by https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/gmt/pull/4849