Re; A MinGW release tomorrow?

[David Bateman]

Seb,

I'm not really going to have any time to do much in the near future. 
However, what I'd intended to do to reduce the size

1) Remove all of the gnuwin32 files that aren't needed. This is easy as 
there is a manifest file if each gnuwin32 package in 
/mingw/manifest/*-lib.mft for all of the files that can be removed
2) I'd like to make a patch to the octave install that prevents the files
  ./bin/mkoctfile-2.9.4
  ./bin/octave-bug-2.9.4
  ./bin/octave-config-2.9.4
  ./lib/octave-2.9.4
  ./lib/octave-2.9.4/libcruft.dll.a.2.9.4
  ./lib/octave-2.9.4/liboctave.dll.a.2.9.4
  ./lib/octave-2.9.4/liboctinterp.dll.a.2.9.4
from being installed, as these are copies and not links. I can probably 
drop all of /lib/octave-2.9.4 in fact, as the *.dll.a files aren't used.
3) Make an effort at removing some of the other extra's from the source 
packages that aren't needed for octave, "ls /mingw/bin/*.exe" should 
have quite a few in it that can be removed, most notable ginsh.exe, the 
hdf5 stuff etc.
4) Perhaps remove all of the *.dll.a files. Care needed here as the cln 
library can only be built under mingw as a static library, and so the 
cln *.dll.a libraries are needed. This is the cause of my problems 
building the symbolic toolbox as how do you link correctly a static 
library in an oct-file. I think the solution is probably to force cln to 
be linked into octave.exe, and then even the cln dll.a files can be removed.
5) Drop the /mingw/lib/*.lib and /mingw/lib/*.a files, again some care 
needed to find which ones to drop.
5) There should be quite a few files in /mingw/include that should be 
removed
6) The home directories in /home should be removed. This should be down 
just before packaging as it'll be recreated by msys.
7) Anything else that I haven't thought of yet.

I'd wanted to make this part of the build script. If we can drop the 
*.dll.a, *.lib and *.a files this will gain the most space. But should 
be very careful what is removed. Don't touch the g++ or gcc files. I'd 
thought to experiment by moving all of the above an putting things back 
untill everything worked again. I fully expect that the install might be 
reduced to about 200MB or under and the installer to 50 to 70MB.

Regards
David

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David Bateman                                address@hidden
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