Charges for Mac Binaries

[Rik]

There was a discussion on the bug tracker (https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?34667) about pre-built Mac binaries which deserves to be on the Maintainers list.  The executive summary is that Octave should perhaps charge for pre-built Mac binaries in the same way we are proposing to do for Window binaries.

--Rik

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>> I hate to be a nudge about this, but...
>>
>> a. I'm trying to get a version of Octave that runs on the Mac on my Mac. There is no pre-built Mac version of 3.6 that I can find.
>>
>> b. It is very hard to build Octave on one's own because of all the dependencies on other packages that aren't already installed on the mac and have to be downloaded and built and linked. Not at all easy. (I admit, I haven't tried 3.6. so I will give it try now, but if 3.6 is anything like 3.4.3 it will be long drawn exercise in frustration.)
>>
>> c. If the Octave community is to grow, some how we need to make sure that everyone (on all supported platforms) has access to the latest version of Octave. With Stanford's last semester's free Machine Learning online class (ml-class.org), several thousand people got involved, but the PC users were stuck with an old version of Octave and were needlessly frustrated by blocking bugs that were long fixed. This gave a needlessly poor impression of Octave, which really deserves better.
>>
>> In the next semester, both the free Stanford Machine Learning and Probabilistic Graph Model class (pgm-class.org) will attract thousands more students who will be using Octave on both the PC and the Mac and it looks like once again, they will be stuck with using out-dated versions of Octave.
>>
>> What's the point of doing all the hard work to make Octave a better program when very few people will be able to use it? This is really too bad.
>>
>> Please, can somebody get organized and make sure up-to-date binaries are available? (Octave seems to be the one open source project that I have the most problems with getting the most recent version.)
>>
>> btw, the README.MacOS isn't terribly helpful as it claims:
>>
>> A MacOS bundle is available from sourceforge.
>>
>> http://octave.sourceforge.net/index.html
>>
>> and I don't see newer than 3.4.0:
>> https://sourceforge.net/projects/octave/files/Octave%20MacOSX%20Binary/
>>
>> Please can somebody help??
>>
>> Many thanks in advance.
>>
>>
>> Packaging is a different skill, knowledge set, etc. from numerical methods. I'm a developer, but I probably have less of a clue than you do on how to build anything on a Mac platform. I appreciate that there is a set of potential users who could be enabled by a click once and install package, but I don't know how to solve that problem technically.
>>
>> There has been some talk on the Octave-Maintainers list about charging a nominal fee for a Windows binary distribution. This would support Octave and also, hopefully, interest someone enough to do the packaging. Maybe the same thing can be done for Mac? If you are interested in this approach I think it would be good to post to the Octave-Maintainers list with your frustrations and what you would consider reasonable compensation for having a Mac binary distribution.
>>
>> I know we have at least two regular developers who are using the Mac platform so building from source really is a possibility. They have also updated the README.MacOs beyond the 3.4.0 version.
>>
>> Part of the problem is that there was a showstopper bug in 3.6.0 so the project immediately moved to release 3.6.1. Because of this, there hasn't been a lot of publicity about the release of the 3.6.X series nor have there been packagers willing to work on the 3.6.0 code.
>>
>>
>> here's some thoughts:
>>
>> The last binary build was 3.4.0 as you can see here:
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/octave/files/Octave%20MacOSX%20Binary/
>>
>> It seems like binary builds were pretty consistently done until after 3.4.0 (3.4.1-3 and the current 3.6.0 where skipped.) My (naive) suggestions are:
>>
>> a. try to replicate what was done back then. Perhaps you need some new volunteers. I would consider volunteering myself, except I haven't been able to build Octave 3.6.0. I'm willing to learn but I'm missing some important bits of information. (Probably a 32bit and 64bit would need to be made. I don't know if additional versions need to be made for each current and most recent OS. It's probably safe to abandon the PowerPC version of Octave at this time.)
>>
>> b. The documentation in ./etc/README.MacOS needs to be updated and expanded. It doesn't seem to be because the 3.6.0 version as there is still a reference to 3.4.0.
>>
>> There needs to be a step by step detail for somebody to build the latest version from scratch. Especially useful would be a list of libraries that don't come with the stock mac that need to be downloaded and built. What's frustrating is that every build stops because some library is missing. I have to figure out where it is and then download it and try to build it. It's a good thing that the developers of Octave are use a lot of libraries instead of reinventing the wheel, but that does suggest that each build come a note about which libraries and programs were used to make a binary.
>>
>> Could the ./configure program be made report the missing required and optional libraries?
>>
>> In particular, I was able to download and build GNU Readline 6.2 but I don't understand what needs to be done to get it to link with Octave. (Something about "you may need to run ldconfig" which doesn't exist on the Mac but apparently dyld is the equivalent, but I don't know what needs to be done...)
>>
>> I think if a builder knows that there is some fixed N number of libraries missing, s/he can feel progress is being made, but if there is an unknown number, it's unsettling because there seems to be no end.
>>
>> I know it would be a lot of work to make a step by step list, but once it's made then binaries could be made by almost anyone and distributed.
>>
>> c. Finally, I turned off Readline in order to continue with the 3.6.0 build but it failed here:
>>
>> /Users/me/build/octave-3.6.0/doc/interpreter//linalg.texi:1134: Unknown command `leq'.
>> /Users/me/build/octave-3.6.0/doc/interpreter//linalg.texi:1134: Misplaced {.
>> /Users/me/build/octave-3.6.0/doc/interpreter//linalg.texi:1134: Misplaced }.
>> /Users/me/build/octave-3.6.0/doc/interpreter//linalg.texi:1137: Unknown command `geq'.
>> /Users/me/build/octave-3.6.0/doc/interpreter//linalg.texi:1137: Misplaced {.
>> /Users/me/build/octave-3.6.0/doc/interpreter//linalg.texi:1137: Misplaced }.
>> (and many more similar errors)
>>
>> line 1134 contains:
>> = small: leading block has all |lambda| @leq{} 1
>> line 1137 contains:
>> = big: leading block has all |lambda| @geq{} 1
>>
>> I'm guessing this is why 3.4.0 was built without docs, so I'm guessing there's a bug with doc generation (may be Mac only?)
>>
>> I don't know what this code is, but perhaps this is now an actionable bug?
>>
>> d. I know making a .dmg is an extra step that would also need to be worked out when making a mac binary.
>>
>> In any case, I am appreciative of Octave since it has been very useful to know. I also know that making Octave is a lot of work and there's lots more to do: I grep'ed for FIXME in the Octave sources and see there are 451 instances of it in the 3.6.0 code base.
>>
>> Thanks for all the hard work and listening.
>>