From octave-maintainers-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Fri Jan 23 19:00:54 2004
Subject: Re: DLD compilation errors
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>
Cc: gdg at zplane dot com, help-octave <help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu>
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 18:59:58 -0600

On 23-Jan-2004, Glenn Golden <gdg at zplane dot com> wrote:

| Aha.  It's inside a conditional for HAVE_CONFIG_H:
| 
| 
|     #ifdef HAVE_CONFIG_H
|     #include <config.h>
|     #endif
| 
| which I assumed was being #defined by mkoctfile... but I guess not,
| because when I explicitly define it, it compiles ok.

[I'm moving this to the octave-maintainers mailing list and have set
the Reply-To: header so that followup messages should go there.  --jwe]

This brings up some things that should have been fixed a long time
ago.

First, we should separate the parts of Octave's config.h file that are
specific to Octave and might be needed by users writing .oct files and
put them in a separate file (not called config.h).  This new file
would be installed and users could include it if needed (oct.h would
include it).  All the rest of the configuration information needed to
build Octave could go in config.h, which need not be installed.  If
users writing .oct files need similar system-specific information,
they would need to have their own configure scripts.

Second, it would be great if we could eliminate the need for

  TWO_BYTE_INT
  FOUR_BYTE_INT
  EIGHT_BYTE_INT

in liboctave/data-conv.h and

  SIZEOF_INT
  SIZEOF_LONG
  SIZEOF_LONG_LONG
  SIZEOF_SHORT

in config.h.  I think it would be best to have this information
decided at run time (that would help with cross-compiling).

Third, oct.h needs updating to include all the relevant headers.  Or,
better yet, we need to finally decide on what interface to make public
and export to users and what should be private, and only put the
public interface in oct.h (and maybe it should be renamed octave.h).

Comments?

Would someone like to volunteer to help with these changes?

Thanks,

jwe