RE: binary packages

[THOMAS Paul Richard]

Dear All,

>| Windows 98, 2000, XP:
>|      Two approaches here:  one is a cygwin package approach,
>|      the other a separately installed binary.   My own preference
>|      is for a separately installed binary which can optionally
>|      install into an existing cygwin environment.

>For a separately installed binary package, the key feature is that it
>play nice with existing Cygwin installations.  I would prefer to not
>see any more angry messages from people who blame Octave for screwing
>up their Cywgin installation...

I agree with both Paul and John's remarks.  The binary installation of
octave-2.1.50a for Windows is very good and runs right out of the box with
all the octave-forge goodies, ready to use.

However, it does wreck an existing Cygwin installation because it modifies
the Cygwin registry entries.  Is it necessary for this to happen?  Plenty of
other software packages find their .dlls by dint of deploying appropriate
paths or directory structures. Alternatively, could the Cygwin components
and registry entries be renamed, for example with a postfix, such that it is
apparent what they are but clashes do not occur?

It strikes me that trying to plug an octave binary into an existing Cygwin
installation might cause more trouble than it is worth because of possible
incompatibilities between different versions.  The Windows binary amounts to
19.6Mbyte, which is tiny by today's standards.  Of this, only about 5Mbytes
are Cygwin components. Thus the space saved would be more or less
negligible.

Paul Thomas  



-------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
-------------------------------------------------------------