Re: Error downloading fltk-1.3.2-source.tar.gz during Octave installation on Mac OS X Mountain Lion

[Ben Abbott]

On Apr 26, 2013, at 12:24 AM, AndrewJanke wrote:

> bpabbott wrote
>> On Apr 23, 2013, at 1:34 AM, Gyan Ranjan wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I have been trying to install Octave on Mountain Lion using the 
>>> homebrew packet manager as described on the wiki page. 
>>> However, at the stage where one has to type: 
>>> 
>>> % brew install octave 
>>> 
>>> the installation process is stalled with the following error:
>>> 
>>> curl: (7) couldn't connect to host
>>> Error: Download failed:
>>> http://ftp.easysw.com/pub/fltk/1.3.2/fltk-1.3.2-source.tar.gz
>>> 
>>> Can any one please provide a means to resolve this? 
>>> 
>>> Many thanks!
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> Gyan
>> 
>> First a qualifier, I think Homebrew has dropped support for octave.  Has
>> that changed?
>> 
>> The error you are getting is unrelated to that.  You'll need to use an
>> alternative ftp site (mirror) for fltk.  My understanding is that an
>> alternative mirror may be specified in Homebrew's formula for FLTK.  Maybe
>> someone else on the list will know more.
>> 
>> You might also try the Homebrew forum/mail-list, but I'm not sure if such
>> a thing exists.  They have a "issues" list that looks to more of a bug
>> tracker.  If that is the wrong place to seek help, no doubt someone will
>> point you to the correct place.
>> 
>>      https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues
>> 
>> Ben
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> I'm Andrew Janke; I've been doing some work with Homebrew and specifically
> Octave lately.
> 
> Homebrew has not dropped Octave support. It has active users, so it'll stick
> around for the foreseeable future. However, octave has been moved from the
> main "homebrew" section to the "homebrew/science" tap. This is basically a
> namespace change, as Homebrew reorganizes to handle its swelling ranks of
> packages. To install octave now, you need to `brew tap homebrew/science`
> before you do `brew install octave` or related packages.
> 
> That said, there's been bugs in some Octave dependencies, so it hasn't been
> building for the past week or so. We're in the process of fixing that.
> Here's the bug if you want to watch it.
> https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-science/issues/132
> 
> Gyan, your particular problem is that octave depends on the package fltk,
> which is hosted on easysw.com, and easysw.com goes down a lot. We just
> checked in a fix for this today, downloading fltk from a more reliable
> mirror. Do a `brew update` and this problem should go away.
> 
> So, give it a day for the remaining Octave build issues to sort out. If it's
> still broken tomorrow, head over to the homebrew-science issue tracker (each
> tap has their own issue tracker), see if any octave issues are still open,
> and report your build failure as a bug if it doesn't look like one of the
> open issues.
> https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-science/issues/search?q=octave&state=open
> 
> There's a troublehsooting guide which lists places to get Homebrew help:
> https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/wiki/troubleshooting. For build failures
> like this, the GitHub issue trackers are most appropriate, or the Freenode
> IRC channel if you want fast response to a short question.
> 
> Sorry for the long-windedness.
> 
> Cheers,
> Andrew

Andrew,

Thanks for correcting our misunderstanding!  This is good news!

May I ask for a favor?  Would you review and then modify our simplified install 
instructions on the wiki?

        http://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_MacOS_X#Homebrew

 Thanks again!
Ben