Octave with non-gcc compilers and build testing

[John W. Eaton]

I spent some time today working on Octave with the Sun and Compaq C++
compilers on SPARC and Alpha systems.  I think I've worked out most of
the problems so Octave almost builds out of the box on both systems.

Paul reports that he is also close to being able to build Octave on
SGI systems with the SGI compiler, at least after creating some
header files to wrap the C headers for C++.

Thanks to Mumit's earlier work with the Sun and Intel compilers, and
Paul's recent work with the SGI compiler, my work today wasn't too
hard, though it was somewhat slow going.  The main problems were
regressions that have happened because I normally build Octave only on
Debian systems with gcc.

Maybe it would be useful to set up something like Mozilla's tinderbox
(see http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi?tree=SeaMonkey, for
example).  That way we would have more immediate feedback when there
is a regression in the build process on some platforms.

The closest we have to this kind of setup now is the set of Debian
builds that happen when Dirk makes a new package, but that typically
only happens when I make a new snapshot, and it only tests Debian
systems.

The main problem I see with the tinderbox idea is that we need to have
some poeple donate cycles.  We don't need anything fast, but we do
need some variety.  Currently, I can only offer to set up testing on
Debian x86 and Alpha systems, and perhaps a Sun system (though the
hardware is not mine, so I'm not sure I will be able to get away with
running compile jobs 24/7 on the machines I have access to).  So is
there any interest in helping to set somethign like this up and make
it work?

Thanks,

jwe