Re: trouble compiling

[Luca Citi]

JWE,
I honestly think you are underestimating the problem.

> People building from the VCS are supposed to be developers who will
> know what to do.
I am a developer. I have never needed installing bison before. As far
as I understand it is only needed if the software you are trying to
compile needs a parser. A message hidden somewhere in a log file of
thousands of lines wasn't that helpful.

> Let's not over think this, or waste a huge effort on something that
> might be a problem for only a very few people.
In only 24h, 5-6 developers (if you read their/our messages you'll get
that we aren't completely new to programming and I have seen most of
the names before in this mailing list) were stuck compiling the
mercurial version for this very problem. Improving the instructions
for developers is not "a huge effort" for "a problem for only a very
few people". Jordi kindly and constructively tried to fix this. Thanks
Jordi.

> I think there are many more important problems to worry about.  For
> example, pick one from this list:
I was trying to compile the mercurial version before starting to
attempt to fix a problem with bsxfun and sparse matrices. I wasted a
few hours trying to compile HEAD. I could have spent my time trying to
fix the issue. I was about to give up. I am willing to help improve
octave (for which I thank you) but please, please, please do not scare
away possible contributors with obscure error messages or defensive
email messages.

A big thank you and to the octave community.
Cheers,
Luca