Re: binary packages

[Paul Kienzle]

On Feb 16, 2004, at 7:50 AM, THOMAS Paul Richard wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> > | Windows 98, 2000, XP:
> > |       Two approaches here:  one is a cygwin package approach,
> > |       the other a separately installed binary.   My own preference
> > |       is for a separately installed binary which can optionally
> > |       install into an existing cygwin environment.
>
> > For a separately installed binary package, the key feature is that it
> > play nice with existing Cygwin installations.  I would prefer to not
> > see any more angry messages from people who blame Octave for screwing
> > up their Cywgin installation...
>
> I agree with both Paul and John's remarks.  The binary installation of
> octave-2.1.50a for Windows is very good and runs right out of the box 
> with
> all the octave-forge goodies, ready to use.
>
> However, it does wreck an existing Cygwin installation because it 
> modifies
> the Cygwin registry entries.  Is it necessary for this to happen?  
> Plenty of
> other software packages find their .dlls by dint of deploying 
> appropriate
> paths or directory structures. Alternatively, could the Cygwin 
> components
> and registry entries be renamed, for example with a postfix, such that 
> it is
> apparent what they are but clashes do not occur?

That would very definitely be a bug!   octave-2.1.50a does not modify
existing cygwin registry entries.  Instead it ships with its own set of
modified cygwin dll's which use their own registry keys.  If you have
evidence otherwise, please let us know!

> It strikes me that trying to plug an octave binary into an existing 
> Cygwin
> installation might cause more trouble than it is worth because of 
> possible
> incompatibilities between different versions.

At a minimum we need to be able to drop the development tools
(headers, libs and mkoctfile) somewhere they can be picked up
by an existing cygwin.  Hopefully the compatibility issues will be
minimized.   I don't really want to include the whole GNU tool chain
in the development binary, though that is a possibility.

> The Windows binary amounts to
> 19.6Mbyte, which is tiny by today's standards.  Of this, only about 
> 5Mbytes
> are Cygwin components. Thus the space saved would be more or less
> negligible.

How about we add 75 Mb of vtk+glue so that we have good
3D support? Along with the complete GNU tool chain, that
should bring us right in line with the times ;->

Paul Kienzle
address@hidden



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