Testing MINGW32 binary 2.9.12 available

[Benjamin Lindner]

A testing binary of a octave 2.9.12 mingw32 build is available at
http://www.dbateman.org/octave/octave_i686-pc-mingw32-2.9.12-2.exe

Thanks to David Bateman for hosting it.

The binary contains a build of octave 2.9.12 including dependency 
libraries and a msys+gcc environment to build toolboxes out-of-the-box 
using the pkg.m mechanism.

In case someone is interested: The size is 23.7MB hereof 10MB msys+gcc 
and 13.7MB octave.
Size is also driven by the lack of dynamic libstdc++ with the used 3.4.5 
 gcc compilers, this will hopefully get better with the gcc-4.2 version.

The binary is a self-extracting 7-zip archive, just unpack in a 
directory of choice, e.g. c:\programs\octave_2.9.12
(the archive does NOT contain a top-level directory!, it directly 
contains bin/, lib/, include/, etc...)

The source patches and building scripts will be available on the 
octave-forge repository, I'll give notice when it's done.

And yes, it is not the latest available octave version, but the one I 
started with and completed a first useful package. And it serves testing 
purposes, of course.

I have tested it under a w2ksp4 and wxpsp2 system and it worked fine so far.

The gcc used for building was the 3.4.5 version.
Meanwhile gcc-4.2.1 is available providing (hooray) a dynamic stdc++ lib 
and f90 compilers. Hopefully gcc-4.2 builds will be as smooth as the 
3.4.5 build (and work, of course)

Dependendies included (as dlls)
*) blas/lapack 3.1.1 (reference build)
*) suitesparse 2.4.0 w/o metis
*) glpk 4.17
*) gmp 4.2.1
*) curl 7.16.4
*) gsl 1.9
*) libtiff/libjpeg/libpng (see the comment on the image toolbox below, 
though)
*) glob 1.0
*) regex 2.5.1
*) pcre 7.0
*) hdf5 1.6.5
*) zlib 1.2.3
*) readline 5.2
*) fftw 3.1.2 (generic build)

It does at the moment NOT contain:
*) optimized ATLAS
*) optimized FFTW3 (sse2/sse3)
*) an editor
*) a gnuplot binary

all four due to lack of time, and gnuplot also due to lack of yet a 
really useful release (4.2.2 does not include volaile data and the 
refresh command).
all four are worked on.

I have built the following toolboxes (via
pkg install -verbose <package>):

octave:1:T:\octave_2.9.12-2\bin
> pkg list
Package Name       | Version | Installation directory
-------------------+---------+-----------------------
            audio *|   1.0.0 |
    combinatorics *|   1.0.1 |
   communications *|   1.0.1 |
          control *|   1.0.0 |
     econometrics *|   1.0.1 |
            fixed *|   0.7.1 |
          general *|   1.0.1 |
         geometry *|   1.0.1 |
              gsl *|   1.0.0 |
            ident *|   1.0.0 |
informationtheory *|   0.1.0 |
               io *|   1.0.1 |
             irsa *|   1.0.0 |
   linear-algebra *|   1.0.0 |
    miscellaneous *|   1.0.1 |
             nnet *|   0.1.1 |
            optim *|   1.0.0 |
         outliers *|  0.13.2 |
physicalconstants *|   0.1.0 |
             plot *|   1.0.0 |
       polynomial *|   1.0.0 |
           signal *|   1.0.1 |
          specfun *|   1.0.1 |
   special-matrix *|   1.0.0 |
          splines *|   1.0.0 |
       statistics *|   1.0.1 |
          strings *|   1.0.0 |
           struct *|   1.0.0 |
             time *|   1.0.0 |
             vrml *|   1.0.1 |
           zenity  |   0.5.0 |

The following toolboxes do currently not compile:
        geometry-1.0.1  QHull not found
        octcdf-1.0.4    missing -lnetcdf
        odepkg-0.3.0    compilation errors, missing references (?)
	parallel-1.0.0	missing headers sys/socket.h, sys/poll.h, netinet/in.h, 
netdb.h
        plot-1.0.0      no X system...
        sockets-1.0.0   missing headers see parallel-1.0.0
        symbolic-1.0.0  no GINAC library
        image-1.0.1     compilation error? - see comment below
        optiminterp-0.2.2       no F90 support with the gcc-3.4.5 used

everything as expected except for the image toolbox.
Here there seems to be a definition clash with the jpeg and octave 
headers. I haven't dealt with it yet.

Comments and feedback welcome.

benjamin