Re: GUI doesn't appear when using ./run-octave

[Michael D. Godfrey]

On 09/23/2012 11:33 AM, Philip Nienhuis wrote:

Still, Octave refused to properly startup, which could be fixed by removing the qt-settings file from an earlier version. So, somehow Qt's mechanism as it is implemented in Octave is unreliable.

An obvious guess at the cause would be a setting (or some settings) that confuse(s) Octave's GUI. Maybe they contained mutually exclusive info or so; or -as you seem to suggest- a setting name was reused for another setting type (such a mix-up would be sloppy at best).

A more robust system is needed to keep track across Octave versions of which settings file entries are used for what settings, and to help Octave avoid stumbling across inconsistencies there.

Philip

I just had similar experience:

1. Started octave (current devel system on Fedora 17 x86_64).  It failed to start properly.
2. Removed the qt_settings file.
3. Started octave, which came up in full screen mode.  Not an appropriate
    choice, in my view.
4. I tried left clicking on one of the previous commands in the command history
    panel on the left.  Octave shut down without any indication of cause.  It would
    help debugging if some indication of the cause could be written somewhere
    when the system crashes.
5. In this case, unlike previous versions, there were no zombie processes
    left behind.

The good news is that the startup time is MUCH shorter than bringing up Matlab
even when using matlab -nodesktop.

It may be too early to ask for serious work on stability, but this will be needed
in the end.

Michael