Re: Octave on DOS

[John Eaton]

Byron Newberry <address@hidden> wrote:

: I realize this may be a stupid question, but is it possible to compile
: octave to run on an 8088 DOS machine.  I currently have an old version
: of matlab running on my XY (with math-co).  However, it is very outdated
: and we have started using octave at my school lab ( on NeXT machines ).
: Is it even worth my time to try to make this work on my XT or are
: there obvious barriers that can not be overcome.

I doubt that you would get very far with trying to make Octave work on
an 8088 running DOS.

Several people have contacted me saying that they have tried to
compile Octave on 386 or 486 DOS systems using the djgpp port of gcc,
but so far no one has reported actually making it work.

I suspect that there are several problems that will be hard to
overcome.  One is the use of Unix signals, which are apparently not
implemented by djgpp.  Another is the use of pipes to open connections
to gnuplot and the pager.

Perhaps someone who knows more abut djgpp can say whether it would
be possible to make these features work.

Also, isn't the current release of djgpp based on gcc 2.4.5?
Compiling Octave now requires gcc 2.5.6 or later.

jwe