Re: GNU Octave 3.8.0 Released

[Sergei Steshenko]

>________________________________
> From: John W. Eaton <address@hidden>
>To: octave help mailing list <address@hidden>; octave maintainers mailing list 
><address@hidden>; address@hidden 
>Sent: Wednesday, January 1, 2014 1:08 AM
>Subject: GNU Octave 3.8.0 Released
> 
>
>The Octave developers are pleased to announce a major new release of
>GNU Octave, version 3.8.0.
>
>One of the biggest new features for Octave 3.8 is a graphical user
>interface. It is the one thing that users have requested most often
>over the last few years and now it is almost ready. But because it is
>not quite as polished as we would like, we have decided to wait until
>the 4.0.x release series before making the GUI the default interface
>(until then, you can use the --force-gui option to start the GUI).
>
>Given the length of time and the number of bug fixes and improvements
>since the last major release Octave, we also decided against delaying
>the release any longer. So please enjoy the 3.8 release of Octave and
>the preview of the new GUI. We believe it is working reasonably well,
>but we also know that there are some obvious rough spots and many
>things that could be improved.
>
>Please see http://octave.org/NEWS-3.8.html for a more complete list of
>significant user-visible changes in this release.
>
>WE ALSO NEED YOUR HELP to fix the remaining problems, complete the
>GUI, and improve the overall user experience for both novices and
>experts alike:
>
>   * If you are a skilled software developer, you can help by
>     contributing your time to help with Octave's development.
>     See http://octave.org/get-involved.html for more info.
>
>   * If Octave does not work properly, you are encouraged to report the
>     problems you find.  Bug reporting guidelines are available at
>    http://octave.org/bugs.html
>
>   * Whether you are a user or developer, you can help to fund the
>     project.  Octave development takes a lot of time and expertise.
>     Your contributions help Octave continue to improve.  The Free
>     Software Foundation's Working Together for Free Software campaign
>     fund now accepts donations for Octave at
>    https://my.fsf.org/donate/working-together/octave
>
>We hope you find Octave to be useful. Please help us make it even
>better for the future!
>
>
>The source code for Octave 3.8.0 is available for download at:
>
>  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave
>  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave
>
>Please see http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html for mirror sites around
>the world.  Or you may use http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/octave, which will
>redirect automatically to a nearby mirror.
>
>Links to binary (executable) versions for various systems will be
>listed at http://octave.org/download.html as they become
>available.
>
>As always, many people contributed to this Octave release.  A complete
>list of contributors may be found in the Octave manual.
>
>
>About Octave:
>
>GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended
>for numerical computations.  It provides capabilities for the
>numerical solution of linear and nonlinear problems and for
>performing other numerical experiments.  It also provides extensive
>graphics capabilities for data visualization and manipulation.  Octave
>is normally used through its interactive command line interface, but
>it can also be used to write non-interactive programs.  The Octave
>language is quite similar to Matlab so that most programs are easily
>portable.  A full description of Octave capabilities is available at
>http://octave.org/doc/interpreter/index.html.
>_______________________________________________
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>
>
>

I have read http://octave.org/NEWS-3.8.html and have the following questions:

1) has Octave packaging been redefined (or, rather, properly defined) ? And, 
correspondingly, has 'pkg.m' been reimplemented ?

2) taking into account the following from http://octave.org/NEWS-3.8.html :


"
The following configuration variables have been deprecated in Octave 3.8 and 
will be removed from Octave 3.12 (or whatever version is the second major 
release after 3.8): CC_VERSION  (now GCC_VERSION) CXX_VERSION (now GXX_VERSION) 
"

can Octave be built with LLVM ? If yes, what does GCC in GXX in GCC_VERSION and 
GXX_VERSION have to do with it ?

Thanks,
  Sergei.