Re: Packaging Octave for Windows and OS X (was: writing integer with fwrite)

[Andy Adler]

On 14 Dec 2004, John W. Eaton wrote:

> On 14-Dec-2004, Andy Adler <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> | - The code bloat problem. A static compiled octave is _much_
> |   smaller and _much_ more responsive than a dynamically compiled
> |   octave. OTOH, dynamic octave allows more flexibility, which
> |   pluggable ATLAS, FFTW etc.
> |
> |   This problem is so bad that I find that I'm still mostly
> |   using the static compiled 2.1.42 version that I made 2 years ago.
>
> I was not aware of this problem.  When I run Octave built with shared
> libraries on a Windows system, it seems as responsive as the version I
> have on a Debian system.  OTOH, the .oct files do seem to be
> considerably larger.  For a very simple one, I see about 220k on the
> Windows system vs. 11k for the Debian version (both are stripped).
> Does anyone know what is causing this?

You are right; the dynamically linked version is as responsive.
I mean that it takes much longer to load. From the shell, I have
a function that does things like

    echo "1+1" | octave -q

This takes much longer with the dynamically linked version.

>
> | - The windows custom/cygwin problem. We would like to have a
> |   version for cygwin, and also one that has a custom NSIS based
> |   installer.
>
> Why?  What advantage does an NSIS installer have over creating Cygwin
> packages and using the Cygwin installer?

The NSIS installer provides an *.exe installer that works the way
windows users expect (and is less complicated to explain than the
cygwin installer). It makes links to 'octave' the way a windows Matlab
user is used to.

To be honest, when I'm using a 'foreign' computer, and I need a
quick install of octave, I choose the NSIS version rather than
the cygwin installer.

Now that I think about it, the best would be an NSIS installer
that automatically gets the latest cygwin package and installs
it into a custom minimal cygwin environment.

--
Andy Adler <adler AT site.uOttawa.ca> 1(613)562-5800x6218




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