Re: Unreliable OSX Builds

[Joel LeBlanc]

I'm not nearly talented enough to get this thing built with any confidence.  For a while, I "fixed" something by adding "-L/sw/lib/fltk-aqua/lib -L/sw/lib/flex/lib -L/sw/lib -lfltk_gl -lfltk" to the configure statement (see my original post).

It seems that autoconf is completely unaware that port and fink produce /opt and /sw folders that are highly likely to contain the libraries your gonna need.  I'd try to help, but seriously, my ineptitude in such matters is staggering ; )

What worries me is that it won't build... regularly.  It released without being able to be built.  How can this thing possibly be passing testing, and get to a released, if it won't even build?

It's too bad.  I'd really like to contribute to testing (I'm a power Matlab user), but I'm basically being left out.  Imagine the average Matlab user, they're not going to tweak configure flags.  As a result, they'll never even have a chance to give feedback because it'll never build.

I guess bringing it up in the forums (is this really a forum?), is the best way to start moving toward a fix.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

~Joel

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Thomas Treichl <address@hidden> wrote:

Joel LeBlanc schrieb:

I have been building (or trying to build) octave on OSX for some time now.  It didn't work, then I fixed a few things and it did for a couple of weeks, now it won't build again.  Surely I am doing something wrong.  I can't understand how the build process can be so fragile.  There also don't seem to be clear instructions on how to build, and from what I've read in the archives its far from autogen->configure->make.

Is there a reliable way to get things built?  Do any of the developers work on OSX, or is there a procedure that SHOULD result in a successful build?  How do I get to the current stable code (I'm assuming the HEAD is the "testing/devepment" code).

I apologize in advance for my ignorance,

~Joel

Hi Joel,

I would say that we currently have some problems to compile the current Octave sources on MacOSX - work is currently done too to fix them. BTW, we are always interested in, like you say "I fixed a few things", what you fixed exactly. The number of people compiling Octave for themselves on MacOSX is small and maybe we do the same thing - so it might be an idea of proposing a patch to fix things for all Macs?

Best regards,

 Thomas