Re: distributing Octave in August

[poti]

On 04:25 Fri 15 Jun     , Paul Kienzle wrote:
> 
> On Jun 15, 2007, at 1:24 AM, address@hidden wrote:
> 
> >Dear maintainers,
> >
> >I have nearly completed a project to put together a system for 
> >statistics that can be run from DVD (or an iPod) on Macs and PCs.  At 
> >the start of August I will be distributing DVDs based on this project 
> >at the Joint Statistical Meetings.
> >
> 
> This would be an excellent debut for Thomas Treichl's octave for OS X 
> app bundle.  It doesn't quite work yet but it is close.
I would very much like to see this. Space would become an issue, but I
have not put an emphasis on optimizing this yet. 

> 
> How do you package and ship R for OS X.  Are you using an app bundle?  
The way I am making everything work is by configuring and defining needed
variables in site_lisp.el and then running everything through Emacs.

For R, I am not using an app bundle or a framework. At the moment I 
am defining DLYD_LIBRARY_PATH in site_lisp.el and placing needed libraries in
in an appropriate lib/ directory. It would be better to place
that definition in the appropriate R and Rcmd scripts which R uses as
wrappers to do such configurations. If there is a way
other than this that is 'right' that would be best. I am not a
programmer, I am a user who saw specific needs and opportunities and I
have cobbled together something that worked for my purposes.

> How do you get emacs to talk to R within the bundle?
This is done very well by ess, a central feature of this project. 

> 
> Are you shipping universal binaries? 
I do not have access to an intel mac (though this may change), so only TeX 
Live and Emacs are universal. 
 
> Are you shipping 64-bit binaries? 
No. 

> Are you supporting 10.3? 10.2?
Not specifically. 

For all of the above, I hope that once someone at an institution has a DVD and 
the included URLs, people there would adjust things to fit their local needs, 
including making modified copies onto appropriate media and, I would hope, 
eventually converting their operating systems to GNU/Linux. 

I think the portable free software lab concept (how to smash Windoze with your
(personal media device)) is important and, beyond my current pragmatic software 
needs, that is my longterm motivation.

Any suggestions/criticisms/help are greatly welcome. In the next three
or four days I have to move my emphasis to getting screen shots and 
working on presentation, including bringing the project site
http://potis.org/software/livedvd 
up to date. 

Thank you for your questions. 
-Poti