Re: Uninstalling windows octave destroyed my cygwin installation!

[Andy Adler]

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, John W. Eaton wrote:

> On 30-Nov-2003, Andy Adler <address@hidden> wrote:
> | CHANGE THE OCTAVE.ORG WEB PAGE TO POINT TO
> |     http://sourceforge.net/projects/octave
> | FOR WINDOWS BINARY DOWNLOADS  !!!!
> |
> | This will save lots of problems posted to this mailing list,
> | and will give a much better first impression to new users.
>
> I'm sorry that the link is out of date.
>
> I've fixed it to point to my directions for installing Octave as a
> Cygwin package, and also to http://sourceforge.net/projects/octave.

Thanks. Sorry for shouting.

> If this is incorrect, or you would like to have other information on
> the web pages, then please post a patch (the sources for the Octave
> web pages are in a CVS archive along side the Octave sources).
>
> I see that the page http://octave.sourceforge.net/Octave_Windows.htm
> currently mentions 2.1.42, which I think is out of date.

Yes. This is the static windows build (+octave-forge) I put together
while we were still trying to figure out a good way to get dynamic linking
working.

I've recently asked whether people want a new static build.

By my recollection, the issues with the windows build are:

   - Dynamic Linking loads libstdc++ in each *oct file, making
       the total build very big
   - Win9x can't handle fork
   - The "developer" build need to include unstripped versions
       of the lib*.dll.a files. These are _really_ big.
   - A "click on the exe to install" build
       needs a custom cygwin1.dll to not break a cygwin install
   - Customizing the editor, font, documentation, shortcuts
       etc to integrate cleanly with the start menu

A while ago, there was a discussion that it wan't possible to
create a single windows build that would satisfy all users.
Perhaps Paul could comment on the current status of his
build.

> Finally, I also see that this page recommends that people who already
> have Cygwin should install the file
> octave-2.1.42-gnuplot-octaveforge-noatlas.tar.bz2.  Is this a Cygwin
> package?

Yes. It's a static build with all that stuff built in.

> For Cygwin users, I think that it would be best to have
> Cygwin packages of Octave, Octave-Forge, ATLAS, gnuplot, etc.  Can we
> agree that this is the best way of handling Octave installations for
> people who already have Cygwin?  I have already created packages for
> Octave, octave-forge, and gnuplot.

This would be the ideal scenario, assuming that the various flavours
of windows can handle the same build, otherwise we have

   octave-winnt-user
   octave-winnt-developer
   octave-win9x-user
   octave-win9x-developer
   octave-forge-winnt-user ... etc

which would be a real pain to maintain.

Can anyone update me on this situation?

Andy



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