Re: libtool and mkoctfile

[Benjamin Lindner]

John W. Eaton wrote:
> On  4-Nov-2009, Benjamin Lindner wrote:
>
> | Aside from the question of unix-sh-interpreter yes or no, I disagree
> | to using libtool, at least for windows platform. Simply because
> | libtool does not work properly for windows.
>
> If there are problems with libtool, then I think we should report them
> and try to get the problems fixed.  That way everyone using libtool
> benefits.

I don't know what expereriences other developers have had, but I am 
tending to the other solution: don't use it, if it doesn't *really* help 
you and you can get where you want to anyway without it.

For windows it simply doesn't make any sense to use it, just to get 
source code compiled and linked. Creating an oct file is a one-liner 
with the gnu compiler, and using a nearly-300K sized shell script to do 
the job seems - well - strange?

As I said, requiring it for building octave is one thing, I wouldn't 
choose it as tool, but I respect your decision, and I think I can get it 
working somehow. Not OOTB, but with some hacking.
But I don't see any reasonable point in having it a runtime requirement.

> | At the current stage, windows binaries of octave do not require any
> | privileges for installing a default user (who is not administrator)
> | on windows doesn't have.
>
> Does installing the Msys shell and associated utilities (cp, mv, rm,
> etc.) require administrator privileges?

No, because they do not need to be "installed" in the windows-sense, but 
are distributed as binary archives which you can simply unzip and copy.
There is also an installer available which might require administrative 
privileges, but I confess I never used it. I download the parts I need, 
unpack them and there you are.

benjamin