Re: misbehavior in Octave 2.9.4 for OS/2

[Steven Levine]

In <address@hidden>, on 06/16/06
   at 01:31 PM, "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden> said:

>I had no idea anyone was still building Octave for OS/2.  Does it build
>out of the box, or does it require changes?  If changes are required, it
>would be wise to submit patches so they can be considered for inclusion
>in future versions of Octave.

The build has been awaiting a sufficiently usable gcc/gnu toolchain.  You
might remember that several years ago, I looked at integrating Klaus's
port into the Octave sources.  Given the extreme divergence of the sources
and the non-standard build environment that Klaus had developed, I was
forced to put the project aside due to lack of time.

About 6 months ago, I did a proof of concept Octave build and while the
build had errors, I could see these were solvable with reasonable effort. 
Dmitry's build was a welcome surprise.

The gcc toolchain was implemented as part of the work done to implement
Mozilla for OS/2.  The original Mozilla builds were done with the IBM VAC
compiler, but eventually it's lack of compatibility with current C++
standards caused enough problems to trigger the work on gcc.  The current
gcc for os/2 is 3.3.5.

Over the years, the os/2 versions of build tools such as automake and
libtool have benefited from the prevalence of windows.  Things like
executable extensions and drive letters are supported out of the box.

The interesting thing about OS/2 is that while it is invisible to the
general computer using population, it still has a significant presense in
certain markets.  There are a number of operating systems in the same
category.

One thing that has helped eCS/OS2 over the last several years is that
there is an OEM (www.ecomstation.com) willing to provide ongoing
development and retail distributions.  While it is unlikely that there
ever will be a 64-bit version of eCS/OS2, support for 32-bit hardware
should be reasonably good for the forseeable future.

The required patches to the Octave sources are minimal.  The change list I
have from Dmitry is about 190 lines of patches and commentary.  The
patches not ready for prime time because some of the changes are things
like hard-coded changes to config.h.  These need to move into
automake/configure.

As a side benefit, Dmitry's distribution includes a gnuplot build.

I am hoping to free up enough time in the second half of July to work on
stabilizing the Octave build.

Regards,

Steven

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"Steven Levine" <address@hidden>  MR2/ICE 2.67 #10183 Warp/eCS/DIY/14.103a_W4
www.scoug.com irc.fyrelizard.com #scoug (Wed 7pm PST)
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