Re: Octave 3.6.2 for Windows: Visual Studio or MinGW?

[Nicholas Jankowski]

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 10:14 AM, am304 <address@hidden> wrote:

Hello,

I am about to get IT to install Octave 3.6.2 on my machine (I'm not allowed
to install anything myself :-)) and I noticed that there are 2 distributions
of Octave 3.6.2 for Windows: Visual Studio or MinGW? Which is best? I am
using Windows XP Pro SP2 64-bit if that makes any difference. CPU is Intel
Xeon E5405 @ 2GHz with 10GB of RAM.

Thanks in advance,

Arnaud




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so, using the MinGW version does not actually require 'installation' per se. you download it to a folder and unzip everything into it. The Visual Studio version does use a packaged executable installer.  What I've found is that depending on folder write permissions this lets you 'install/upgrade' the version by yourself with a non-admin account. (you just download and unzip the new version to the same folder.)  If I had wanted to upgrade the visual studio version, it would require another helpdesk call. Hypothetically, upgrading the MinGW version would not. I would of course never recommend you sidestep your IT software control policies :) 

nick j.