Re: mxe-octave stable-octave

[John D]

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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2014 15:41:01 -0500
From: "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden>
To: Thorsten Liebig <address@hidden>
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: mxe-octave stable-octave
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

On 01/02/2014 02:26 PM, Thorsten Liebig wrote:
> Thanks for the update, I have build the stable version without any
problems.
> But I have not had the time to test it on some windows machine.
> If anybody is interested, you can download it here:
> http://www.openems.de/download/octave/octave-3.8.0.exe
>
> Btw: The mk-dist script should create a more suitable name?
> octave-installer.exe is a bit too generic for my taste...
> And the name for the portable zip version
> ("stable-octave-2014-01-02-12-02.zip") is even more stupid?
> Maybe just "octave-3.8.0.zip" ?
>
> Will there be a official windows build for download on octave.org soon?
> IMO it is a big mistake that there is still nothing to download for all
> the potential new Octave users ...

Please take a second and think before saying things like "more stupid" 
and "big mistake".  There's really no need to tell other people who are 
working on Octave that their choices are "stupid" or "big mistakes".

Now, about the merits of your complaints.  Sure, the installer and zip 
files could have a better name.  I chose to use a timestamp because I 
was often making more than one in a day for the same version of Octave 
and I needed an easy way to distinguish.  Given that requirement, does 
it still seem like a stupid choice?

Yes, we would like for there to be an "official" binary for Windows 
available from the Octave web site.  But it's not ready yet.  The last 
time I checked, the installer didn't create a desktop shortcut or 
include any compiled packages.  I think those things need to be done 
before we distribute it.  Would it cause more trouble to delay 
distributing an installer, or to distribute one that doesn't really work 
very well or provide features that nearly everyone would expect?

jwe

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So now the zip file/setup has a better name, an optional (default on)
shortcut is added to the desktop.

I am assuming that in order to compile packages in linux for windows, we
need to be create a native mkoctfile binary that has the windows binaries
settings in it ?