Something more akin to "frozen" Python applications might be more
appropriate for Octave. But that would be a big install, too: We're sort
of doing that for Octave.app (sans the hypothetical user's actual
application code), and once you pull in all Octave's dependencies, it's
a 2-3 GB install.
what are the biggest pieces of that? since you mentioned Python, I'm reminded that Octaves' symbolic package has a Python/Sympy bundled package that comes in at under 20MB. I don't know how much they had to throw away to make that bundle-able version, but I'm guessing something like that is what Iam may have had in mind?