Re: Is the 3.8 "release ? official? - mingw installer

[Philip Nienhuis]

John D wrote:
> Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2013 07:20:02 -0800 (PST)
> From: PhilipNienhuis <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: Is the 3.8 "release ? official?
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> John W. Eaton wrote
> > :
> > <snip>
> > :
> > I don't think we have completely functional installers (including a
> > selection of packages) for Windows or OS X yet.  If we are going to
> > distribute "official" binaries, then who will be making them and from
> > where will we distribute them?
>
> I could make an MXE-cross built Windows installer this week (after New Years
> Eve I'll have time).
> Do we first have installer-release candidates somewhere?
>
> As to a formal installer release, would the Octave-Forge site still be good
> enough? or do we need a site with a gentle or an obtrusive stimulus for
> donating-before-downloading?
>
> Anyway I think that before building it should be discussed here in this ML
> what should be included.
>
> In "my own" installers (that I've regularly built, used and tested at work
> and at home in the last months) I have included ~12 OF packages (newest
> versions) + all Java class libs for spreadsheet I/O (needed for the OF io
> package), plus a few MinGW utils not yet included in MXE (or maybe they are
> by now, I'll have to check). Altogether a 200+ MB installer.
> I'll have to dive into the licenses of those Java .jar files to see how safe
> we are. Note that Nitzan has been including all of them in the current 3.6.x
> MinGW OF pkg installer archives on Octave-Forge.
> Also I've (manually/hard-coded) patched the installer-generated shortcuts
> for the Windows Start menu.
> The NSIS installer is still quite basic; e.g., no desktop icon yet. Should
> we start the GUI from the desktop icon? I'd surmise Windows users simply
> wouldn't expect otherwise.
> Furthermore I have no idea how robust the installer is (in terms of catching
> e.g., write permission errors etc).
>
> In addition I'm still busy upgrading the OF io package - expected to be
> ready within a few days (polishing stage right now). Would be nice to
> include io-2.0.0 in the installer.
>
> Philip
>
>
> ----------------
>
> I updated the installer a few weeks ago with the changes from Anirudha that
> related to mingw as well as a few of my own. It doesn't create a desktop
> icon at the moment, but is easy to add. It does create the start menu icons,
> documentation shortcuts etc. Currently the 'main' octave shortcut runs the
> cli version of octave, with an additional shortcut called Experimental GUI.

I included parts of Anirudha's stuff as well (locally). Java support 
gets (cross-) built fine.

> I don't know if anyone else has gotten a chance to try it out.

No I haven't built since octave-3.8.0-rc2. After New Years Eve I'll try 
again.
That said, I find cross-building with MXE to be a very smooth process 
these days :-)

> Anirudha had a few additional octave packages that I hadn't added yet - I
> will do that.

Some OF packages (not necessarily those that Anirudha included) have 
external dependencies.
For example, the io package has the above mentioned Java class libs (not 
sctrictly required deps BTW), and e.g. the video package requires 
libffmpeg. Especially such external libraries may be good candidates for 
building in MXE.

QtHandles may be nice to have included.

> In addition I have a patch for the GUI shortcut to make it work with the new
> install path of libexec.
>
> What other mingw utils need to be installed?

(I see you already added dos2unix/unix2dos, apart from the unzip utils)
- epstool
- fig2dev
- pstoedit
(these just copied over from a MinGW 3.6.4 installation, including the 
.octaverc stanzas that add the latter two subdirs to the path).

Ghostscript would be nice to have, but if is installed on the client 
system in a path w/o spaces *and* if its bin subdir is added to the 
path, gs isn't required.

Adding all kind of stuff is easy if building it isn't strictly necessary 
(e.g., much mingw utilities that are built in MXE are also available as 
binaries on the mingw download site) - I just put it in the proper 
subdirs of mxe-octave/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/ and it'll get included in the 
installer.

Philip