Re: How to get Octave.app to work 3

[Thomas Treichl]

Gaurav Khanna schrieb:
> Hi
>
> Without digging into my old emails too much, I have gotten negative 
> comments regarding: a) missing octave-forge extensions b) performance 
> and c) issues with plotting (via aquaterm for example). The positive 
> comments are all about the easy install part.
>
> I like to help people with getting things going, but its difficult for 
> me to troubleshoot someone else's application. That would be main 
> motivation for me to go back to creating my own binaries. I still have 
> my 2.9.9 binaries saved, although they don't sit on a webserver. If 
> anyone wants them, I can certainly upload them somewhere ..
>
> Thanks,
> Gaurav

(a) Ok, so I had a look at the performance topic the last days and found out 
that the hpc version is compiled with a higher optimization (and I think also 
its dependencies). The Octave sources are absolutely ok.

With the higher optimization options I was able to create a test-binary 
Octave.app 2.9.13 for IA32 and PPC. I tested the IA32 binary myself and the PPC 
versions have been tested by Henry and Matthias (great thanks to them) and 
reported the following results where (1) is the old Octave.app-2.9.13 and (2) is 
the new Octave.app-2.9.13 using Dimitri's performance testset

  http://www.sciviews.org/benchmark/Octave2.m
  (you may also need http://www.sciviews.org/benchmark/gcd2.m)

Henry's tests on PPC G4
(1) Total time for all 15 tests_________________________ (sec): 38.17
(2) Total time for all 15 tests_________________________ (sec): 17.57

Matthias' tests on PPC G4
(1) Total time for all 15 tests_________________________ (sec): 39.41
(2) Total time for all 15 tests_________________________ (sec): 14.27

My own tests on IA32
(1) Total time for all 15 tests_________________________ (sec): 14.13
(2) Total time for all 15 tests_________________________ (sec): 7.773

I want to do some more tests to have a look if we don't get bugs interchanged 
with higher performance. But I think I will be ready when the next *.tar.gz 
sources of Octave are ready.

---

(b) I may copy the necessary parts from the Readme.html file that comes with the 
*.dmg because I'm too lazy right now to repeat myself (if people want to help to 
make better solutions - you're welcome):

4 Limitations

There are currently some known limitations when using Octave.app. These 
limitations need not to be reported on an Octave mailing list. But if you find 
other bugs or other limitations in the Octave.app respectively Octave then 
please report them to address@hidden

    * Fortran90 code files cannot be compiled.
      Fortran90 and Fortran95 code files etc. cannot be compiled when using the 
command mkoctfile on the command line or when using the commands mkoctfile or 
mex in Octave. The reason is that the program f2c has been set up in Octave.app 
that can just convert Fortran77 code files into C–files. The C–files are then 
compiled with the command gcc that comes with your Apple's XCode Tools (Install 
these from 'DVD 1 of your Mac OS X Install Discs'). The f2c program is one of 
the smallest and oldest free Fortran converters/compilers available. Setting up 
another Fortran compiler that can compile Fortran90 and Fortran95 code files 
(eg. gfortran) for all the different versions of Apple's XCode Tools and gcc 
versions is too difficult. We hope that gfortran somewhen becomes part of 
Apple's XCode Tools so that we do not need to set up f2c anymore.

    * Some packages from Octave–Forge's website cannot be installed.
      Some of Octave–Forge's packages cannot be installed because of the reason 
of a missing gfortran command described before. Known packages that cannot be 
installed because they come with Fortran90 code files are
          o Main repository: Optiminterp
          o Nonfree packages: Splines
      If you want to find out more information why the installation fails for a 
specific package, use the command pkg -v install <package.tar.gz> to build the 
package in verbose mode.

---

(c) This isn't (wasn't) a problem of Octave.app but a Mac platform depended 
problem that would also have appeared with a HPC version.

  Thomas