A lot of people asked me about the procedure from which I build the a
newer version of the Octave for Windows stand-alone package. Here goes:
a) Install a basic cygwin enviroment using the setup tool.
b) Install octave and octave-forge using the setup tool. Before
proceding I manually remove gnuplot and any X11 and graphic libs
dependencies. This has to be done manually selecting the proper list
from the installer (iirc it was the "Partial" list). After the all the
packages are selected as "Skip" from the list, the installer will
complain about octave depending on gnuplot. Click on the checkbox at
the bottom of the dialog to continue anyway.
c) Download the native version of gnuplot from gnuplot.sf.net and copy
all the binaries to the /bin of the cygwin dir (I don't the docs).
Copy pgnuplot.exe to gnuplot.exe, so octave could find it (this can
also be done from octave config files, but I couldn't remember exactly
how).
d) Install rxvt from the setup tool.
e) Copy start_octave.sh from octave-forge to the cygwin dir. It
doesn't matter where 'cause it's only referenced by the nsis script,
which has to be modified anyway. There is a problem with symlinks and
the nsis install builder (don't know exactly why), so in the script
you have to change octave.exe to octave-2.1.72.exe. Also you need to
add the full system (cygwin) path to the PATH variable, so cygwin can
locate the dlls.
f) Copy an octave icon to the cygwin dir. I used the xcalc icon from
the Nuvola collection.
g) Modify the octave-forge nsis script to make it work with the new
directory structure (octave is no longer installed at
/opt/octave-VERSION and some of the registry entries needed
modifications as well). I'll upload the script (along with all the
modified files) as soon as I get home.
h) Build the package using nsis with the modified script.
If you look at the procedure you'll notice that I didn't remove
anything from the cygwin enviroment. Perhaps some useless packages can
be manually deleted to save some space.