From owner-bug-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Sun Dec 29 18:50:04 1996
Subject: fread() broken in 2.0; install-oct bug
From: Darrel Hankerson <hankedr at dms dot auburn dot edu>
To: bug-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1996 18:49:57 -0600 (CST)

1. fread(fid, 1, 'uchar') will cause a seg violation in Octave-2.0
on Solaris.  The syntax is legal:

     The argument SIZE specifies the size of the matrix to return.  It
     may be a scalar or a two-element vector.  If it is a scalar,
     `fread' returns a column vector of the specified length.

and it was accepted in octave-1.1.1.  A workaround appears to be

   fread(fid, [1,1], 'uchar')

2. The Solaris /bin/sh breaks on install-oct in src/Makefile.  The
fragment:

   install-oct: mk-oct-links
        if [ -n "$(OCT_FILES)" ]; then \
          $(top_srcdir)/mkinstalldirs $(octfiledir) ; \
          chmod a+rx mk-oct-links ; \
          for f in $(OCT_FILES); do \
            $(INSTALL_PROGRAM) $$f $(octfiledir)/$$f; \
          done ; \
          ./mk-oct-links $(octfiledir) $(addprefix $(srcdir)/, $(DLD_SRC)) ; \
        fi

will have "for f in ; do" (since OCT_FILES is empty), which won't pass
/bin/sh ("syntax error: `;' unexpected).

3. It does not appear (?) to be possible to use --enable-shared on 
Solaris sparc. 

4. makeinfo-1.55 cannot process the octave files (prints its help,
and quits).  This is needed if prefix is changed.  I have not looked
at this at all, and it may be answered in MAKEINFO.PATCH.

Config: Solars-2.5.1 on Sparc, gcc-2.7.2.1, libg++-2.7.2, Sun f77.

-- 
--Darrel Hankerson hankedr at mail dot auburn dot edu