Re: windows version of Octave

[Andy Adler]

While there is undoubtedly significant interest in a maintained
windows port, there are several issues which make this hard to do well.
This is almost certainly the reason why new windows builds are not
kept up to date.

Some of the issues are:

1) The compiler. gcc >= 3.3 under cygwin make a *much*
slower octave. There is a gcc version 3.2.3 available at
http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ptolemyII/ptII3.0/cygwin.htm;
however, I'm not able to get octave's ./configure to accept this
version of gcc.

    $ CPP=/usr/local/gcc32/bin/gcc.exe CXX=/usr/local/gcc32/bin/c++.exe 
./configure --disable-static --enable-shared --enable-dl
        ...
    checking how to run the C preprocessor... /usr/local/gcc32/bin/gcc.exe
    configure: error: C preprocessor "/usr/local/gcc32/bin/gcc.exe" fails 
sanity check See `config.log' for more details.

2) Static builds of octave are much smaller and start up much
more quickly under windows. Paul Kienzle has shown that much of this
overhead is from a static link of libstdc++.a to each oct file.

I think the best way to handle this would be a way to build octave
with most files statically linked, but still offering the ability to
dynamically load *oct files.

3) Windows installers. Windows users are used to install-shield type
installers. We have found ways to build this based on the open-source
NSIS installer, but it takes time to do this extra packaging.
This installer should also offer the possibility of custom installation
of ATLAS and FFTW libs specific to the CPU.

I agree with John that the correct thing to do is have a cygwin package
which is then used as part of the windows installers.

4) Octave forge. I include octave-forge with my 2.1.42 build, but with
the incorportation of much of octave-forge into recent versions of octave,
octave-forge is somewhat chaotic. I believe that we're sort of waiting
for 3.0 to do a major clean-up of octave-forge.

5) Gnuplot. Windows versions of gnuplot do not allow multiple figures, and
also detach from octave on ctrl-C. X11 versions have these features, but
give a less convenient interface to cut-and-paste to other windows applications.

6) dynamially linked cygwin octave has a memory leak which I've been unable
to narrow down. Try:  echo 'while(1);sort(1);end' | octave -qfH

To summarize, cygwin octave works, but has several issues that make it
less than optimal.
--
Andy Adler

On Fri, 20 May 2005, Doug Stewart wrote:

> As I posted just a few days ago, I think we can make this happen if we
> build binary packages for Cygwin and arrange for them to become part of
> the core Cygwin binary package archive.
> I can help get the process started (I have some scripts for building
> Cygwin packages of Octave to get you going), but I can't be the one to
> build and upload packages on a regular basis because I simply do not
> have the time to do it.
>  As I have said a number of times on this list, it won't happen unless
> someone (or some group) volunteers to do the work.
>  The people who want Octave to improve on Windows systems will have to
> get involved.
>
>  jwe
>
>  OK I have decided to give this a try.
> I will only succeed if I get help for this first run through!
> I have compiled Octave under cygwin about a year ago, so here are some
> questions.
> 1) Are there any problems with the latest Cygwin?
> 2) Which compilers  should I install with Cigwin?
> 3) Which version of octave should I do for general public distribution?
> 4) Which version of Gnuplot should we use?
>
>
>
>  I only ask these questions because I haven't been paying attention to
> these issues for the last 6-9 months.



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