Re: how to install OCTAVE in windows XP

[Quentin Spencer]

Mike Miller wrote:

> On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Quentin Spencer wrote:
>
> > I have tested it recently, and it works well. One observation I have 
> > is that by the time you add X11 and all the other dependencies, it 
> > gets to be a lot of packages to install. The complete octave + 
> > octave-forge installation I did used something like 250 MB of disk 
> > space. The whole list of dependencies includes things that I don't 
> > think octave actually needs like perl (if I recall correctly, 
> > something in either octave or octave-forge required part of TeX, 
> > which required perl). On Unix-like systems it's all pretty standard, 
> > but it may be a bit overwhelming to a Windows user.
>
>
>
> Right.  On the other hand, I kinda like making Windows people use more 
> unixy stuff.  I would probably include some useful shell scripts and 
> perl scripts with code I distribute, so I would want them to have perl 
> and more on there.  It might be best to have a Windows version of 
> Octave like they have a Windows version of R, but that must be a 
> monumental effort to create and maintain well.


That certainly seems to be what people want. Even with an up-to-date 
cygwin release out there, downloads of the 2 1/2 year old 2.1.50 windows 
binary hit an all-time high in November, according to the download stats 
page:
http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/detail.php?group_id=2888&ugn=octave&type=prdownload&mode=alltime&package_id=40078&release_id=174240&file_id=360185


> R seems to have a bigger user base and a bigger developer community so 
> maybe they can afford it more easily.


Maybe so. But it really only takes one dedicated person to step up and 
take maintainership.

-Quentin



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