Re: Uninstalling windows octave destroyed my cygwin installation!

[Paul Kienzle]

On Nov 30, 2003, at 11:08 PM, Andy Adler wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, John W. Eaton wrote:
> > 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 currently mentions 2.1.42, which I think is out of date.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

You can now build stdc++.dll which helps dramatically.

>    - Win9x can't handle fork

I've removed fork from Octave.  I don't remember if John accepted
all the patches though ;-)

>    - The "developer" build need to include unstripped versions
>        of the lib*.dll.a files. These are _really_ big.

I would like to ship a separate developer package with these,
the header files and mkoctfile in them.

>    - A "click on the exe to install" build
>        needs a custom cygwin1.dll to not break a cygwin install

All that is changing is the registry keys.  So long as we choose
a registry key that is shorter than the original, we should be able
to do a binary edit on cygwin1.dll.  I haven't tried it yet.

>    - Customizing the editor, font, documentation, shortcuts
>        etc to integrate cleanly with the start menu

Some leg work in the installer would make this cleaner.

> 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.

A single windows build could satisfy all users, but it would
result in several packages.  The installer already detects
cygwin --- users could choose whether to ignore the bundled
cygwin infrastructure and install in the cygwin heirarchy, or
install a separate cygwin.  The only problem is finding the
time to set up the build system and build the new packages.

> > 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.

What's a pain to maintain is the various flavours of atlas.
I built an LAPACK+BLAS dll with just Z and D functions,
but we won't be able to replace XERBLAS on the fly
within it since dll linkage needs to be resolved at link time
rather than at run time.  I would rather the LAPACK+BLAS
packages be indedpendent of the scientific package so
that they are usable by SciPy, R, SciLab, Octave and
whoever else wants them.  That way, we can share the
work of creating and maintaining the ATLAS packages.

Another issue that will bite us is that different Windows fortran
compilers use different linkage.  That could double or treble
the number of packages unless we require that the package
export a C interface.  I haven't looked at what the other
packages do yet.

Paul Kienzle
address@hidden



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