From octave-maintainers-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Thu May  8 17:24:52 2003
Subject: Windows binaries
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: octave-maintainers mailing list <octave-maintainers at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 17:24:15 -0500

What is the current state of Octave binary distributions for Octave?

There is a link on www.octave.org/download.html to 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/matlinks, but I think the binary that
is available there is not current.

The FAQ for Octave on Windows systems mentions several other
possibilities depending on whether you already have Cygwin installed.

I would like to see all of these efforts merged in some way so that we
can point to one place and have a simple set of instructions (i.e.,
get this file, run it, click next, next, next, finish, possibly
selecting some options along the way, and then you are done).

It seems that the most useful way to install Octave on a Windows
system is with a set of the necessary Cygwin tools (perhaps the
compiler and other bits could be optional if you don't care about
building .oct files).  It would be nice to be able to automatically
detect whether Cygwin needs to be installed or upgraded, without
wiping out an existing Cygwin install.  I've received several
complaints about that, and although I realize that the people who
complained probably did not follow directions, but they are usually
unhappy and point fingers in our direction.

If you have been making a binary distribution but no longer have time
or any interest in doing it, can you please share a fairly precise set
of directions for building the binary distribution so someone else
might be able to take over where you left off?

Should the Octave binary distribution include everything needed, or
should there be a set of packages (octave, gnuplot, etc.)?

How should Cygwin be handled?  Should we include the necessary parts
with the Octave distribution, or should it be a separate package?
Would telling people to download Cygwin from the Cygwin site be
enough?  If so, then would it be worth building a Cygwin package so
that we could just point people to the Cygwin site and tell them to
download and install Cygwin, then install this package on top of that?
I'm not sure whether this is a simple enough solution.  We will still
need to point them to gnuplot binaries in that case, unless our Cygwin
package includes it (which seems like a bad plan).  Would most Windows
users actually do all of this, or would they think it is too many
complicated steps and give up?

I have recently updated the directions for installing Octave from
source on Windows systems and you can find that in the file
README.Windows in the latest source distribution (or by browsing the
CVS archive at www.octave.org if you just want the one file).  This
may be of some help, but I suspect most people who are building the
binary distributions for Windows are already familiar with all those
details.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

jwe