Re: Performance issues on Windows, suggests a MSVC build

[Michael Goffioul]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 11:52 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 22-Jun-2011, Michael Goffioul wrote:
>
> | Indeed. With one difference, though: in the installer I provided, the
> | bundling allowed to install a fully working octave without administrator
> | rights, as a simple user; while using the MS VC++ runtime dll 
> redistributable
> | installer, you need administrator rights.
>
> OK, I didn't understand that part.  But why is it possible for your
> installer to do something as an ordinary user without administrator
> rights that can't be done separately outside of the Octave binary
> installer, say with a separate installer that just installs the
> MSVC runtime library?  I still agree that it does not make much sense
> to force this arbitrary separation.  Or does the MSVC runtime library
> license not allow this kind of redistribution?  I have no idea why it
> would forbid it while at the same time Microsoft is apparently
> encouraging users to redistribute the library as part of applications,
> but with licenses I guess anything is possible.

Besides what I think about what GPL prevents you to do, the MSVC
license is imo the key point. As I dropped the MSVC binaries, I didn't
investigate much, but my understanding was that you're not allowed to
redistribute the runtime DLL's if you don't own a commercial license of
visual studio.

I know at least 2 other projects bundling the MSVC runtime DLL's with
their installer: MiKTeX and python (not 100% sure about this one).
It may be worth asking them how they handle the licensing issues.

Michael.