Re: gcc | Octave 2.1.4x | saga continues

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

> To re-cap, I've been using 2.1.39 successfully on my RH 7.3 system, which 
> has the 2.9.6 gcc compiler bundled. Several people have told me the this 
> version of gcc is 'buggy' (confirming suspicions I've had). But, buggy or 
> not, Octave 2.1.39 compiles and runs just fine with it.

If you're bored, try google (outright and on the newgroups) for search 
terms combining Red Hat and gcc. You'd be amazed ...

> However, starting with Octave 2.1.40, this version of gcc no longer 
> successfully compiles Octave. The solution (as several folks have 
> suggested) is to upgrade to a more recent flavour of gcc. I did so, to 

As documented on the relevant Octave lists, yes, g++ >= 3.2 is needed now.
AFAIK configure will explicitly test for it in 2.1.44.

> 3.2.2. While the Octave make for 2.1.4x seems to get further along than it 
> did with gcc 2.9.6, it still crashes and burns. Turns out that the make is 
> looking for several things which are not located under RH where they might 

No, make doesn't, configure does. And it leaves detailed logs behind. Examine
them.

> be under other version of GNU/Linux (specifically, Debian, which seems 
> to  be the reference standard).
> 
> After about 2 hours of fiddling (adding this library, or that package), I 
> decided to give up, and stick with 2.1.39. With RH, once you start mucking 
> around with compilers, you can screw up a LOT of things (I made this 
> mistake 2 months ago trying to upgrade python - had to do a complete 
> re-install to recover). This is not to denigrate RH - I've found the single 
> biggest pain with GNU/Linux systems in general is in handling package 
> upgrades, and dependency resolution. Each of the 'big' releases of 
> GNU/Linux (RH, SUSE, Debian) has their own approach to handling this, but 
> none of them are as good as they could/should be. As such, upgrading 

Bogus. Lots of people, JWE included, are rather happy with Debian. Many of
us have systems that have been "organically" upgraded over two, three, four, ...
releases, spanning half a dozen years.  To boot, it also allows you to install
several gcc releases in parallel -- I think I have at least 2.95, 3.0 and 3.2.
All of which are actual gcc releases rather than the odd snapshots RH sometimes
takes (and then patches internally to further confuse the version number).

Lastly, I happen to be the maintainer of current octave2.0 and octave2.1 
packages which you can install in parallel, and which are complemented by 
packages like octave-ci, octave-sp, octave-epstk and octave-forge [1] which 
(to best of my knowledge) other distros don't have.

Dirk

[1] octave-forge has not been updated to newer octave versions as Paul et al
have not had time to move all the code. Before anyone complains, over to help 
instead.

> software with multiple dependencies can be a real challenge, and is 
> probably the single biggest reason for people 'purchasing' upgrades from RH 
> (or SUSE) - the upgrades deal with all these hassles for you.
>
> At some point, I'll try again, but in the interim, if anyone manages to 
> build Octave 2.1.4x on a RH 7.xx system, please drop me a line. 
> 
> 
> 
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Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
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