on 3/23/04 3:41 PM, Henry F. Mollet at address@hidden wrote:
Hi Joe,
So let me bring this back to octave on Mac. Installation of Octave on Mac is
apparently much more difficult than it should be unless you're a Unix guru.
If I upgrade to Panther, I'd rather not read a bash manual. Should Mac not
mean easy installation of Octave? Something corresponding to a binary .exe
as is available for Windows? Why do we need Fink or DarwinPorts to be able
to install Octave? As much as I try, I just don't understand nor need this
complication regarding the installation or upgrading of octave on a Mac.
Henry
Henry, I certainly empathize. I spent the better part of the month of
December fighting with UNIX make files for octave and octave-forge in a
futile attempt to install octave. I finally capitulated and installed
earlier versions via Fink. I could write a book, but I don't think anyone
would want to read it. Part of that effort was just to teach myself more
about UNIX.
As I see it there are several contributing reasons to our problems. First,
UNIX is still relatively new to the Mac, and Mac users are still a minority
within the UNIX community. This leads to "critical mass" problems. How many
Mac octave users are there? A dozen? A hundred? There simply are not enough
Mac users (yet?) to to justify a simple .dmg type installation of octave and
octave-forge. Also, this is basically Linux software, and we're fortunate
that we can port it at all.
Gaurav Khanna is close to solving the Mac octave installation problem at
http://hpc.sourceforge.net/
Once you understand his approach, it's a 10 minute job to install octave and
octave-forge from his binaries. I may opt for his approach if he posts a
recent enough version to handle my multi-dimensional matrix problems. That
leaves me with the installation of gnuplot, aquaterm, and maybe some other
GNU/sourceforge oriented dependencies. I have successfully built gnuplot and
aquaterm from source previously, but haven't put all the pieces of the
octave puzzle together yet.
Maybe a "cookbook" approach combining make from source for gnuplot and
aquaterm (and whatever else) with the HPC binaries for octave and
octave-forge is the simplest current Mac installation approach. If I work
out those steps, I'll post them. I don't object to the use of make files as
long as they work. Another approach would be to use DarwinPorts for gnuplot
and aquaterm. Although Fink theoretically is a source for gnuplot and
aquaterm, I'd rather go all-Fink or no-Fink and not try to split the
installation.
In the meanwhile, let's thank Jim, Paul, Per and many others for making
octave available and usable on a Mac. We all know what the alternative
costs.
Joe