Re: GSoC project about binary packaging

[Lukas Reichlin]

On 21.06.2013, at 20:44, Michael Goffioul <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I've a student who's supposed to work on improving/completing binary 
> packaging of octave on Windows and OS X during the next 2 months. However, I 
> can see that there are already 3 to 4 people actively working on MXE. 
> MXE/octave seems to already work for MinGW cross and native, as well as 
> native Linux. So I'm a bit concerned that there won't be much left to do for 
> the student.
> 
> So I'd like you to help define clear goals for this project in order to avoid 
> stepping on each other's toes. For instance, I had listed adding support for 
> OpenBLAS as a possible goal for him, but I saw today it had been added to MXE 
> yesterday.
> 
> Basically, what's left at the moment?
> - writing a NSI installer that's a bit smarter than "dump everything"; it 
> should also support smart reinstallation and package addition (as in: re-run 
> the installer to install additional components, which were not selected 
> previously)
> - missing octave-forge packages + dependencies
> - OS X
> (feel free the extend the list)
> 
> For OS X, I'd like some input from OS X users to assess what's doable. For 
> instance, is it possible to integrate installer building inside MXE (for 
> instance using some native OS X compilation)? I also remember a recent mail 
> from Ben mentioning some new efforts in MacPorts to get octave compiled on OS 
> X.
> 
> At the end of the day, I hope there will be enough work to be done to make a 
> GSoC project.
> 
> Thanks,
> Michael.
> 

Hi Michael,

A new version of a real app bundle [1] for OS X would be nice. App bundles can 
be installed by drag-and-drop without an installer. This could be done using 
Thomas Treichl's work [1] for Octave 3.2 or possibly the new MXE thing. I don't 
see how this could work with macports.

Regards,
Lukas


[1]
http://sourceforge.net/p/octave/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/octave-forge/admin/MacOSX/