Re: dev (gui) build does not start on kubuntu 13.04

[Daniel J Sebald]

On 08/18/2013 03:54 AM, Kirill Fuior wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm trying to build and run octave from dev sources (according to
> etc/HACKING and wiki instructions), but I face a problem -- after
> successful build it simply does not start.
>
> My actions step-by-step:
> * install build-dep octave and bison (it isn't included)
> * clone hg repository
> * bootstrap, configure (without custom options) and make.
> make is passed without errors (with only some compile warnings)
> * then I try ./run-octave or .build/src/octave script and it simply does
> nothing, without any output.
> Only once it showed me wizard "It seems you are running octave gui first
> time..." with only 1 active button "finish". When I click it, wizard has
> been closed and again -- nothing else happen.

This sounds like (in behavior anyway) a bug from early on when the GUI 
would fail because a default-qt-settings file was missing or bad.


> But src/octave-cli runs octave in terminal.

Plotting is fine?


> Also, if I install latest (3.6.4) octave from the repository, it works.
>
> So it seems problem is in gui.

I'm curious why you would get the first-time message "It seems you are 
running octave gui first time...".  If you've been using the GUI for a 
while, the settings files should all be in place and recognized 
properly.  There are two important files (~ means your home directory):

~/.config/octave/qt-settings

If this is missing, then Octave looks for the following:

(install or build directory)/libgui/default-qt-settings

You may want to confirm that at least one of these is present. 
default-qt-settings may be constructed as part of building, so perhaps 
it's possible the file isn't present.

What happens on my system when neither of those files is present (we may 
want to change this) is the "finish" button of the first-time 
notification dialog closes the window temporarily but then the same 
dialog reappears, i.e., an infinite loop.  A question for the developers 
is, Should that be changed?  And, if so, how should it behave?  Toss up 
another dialog explicitly saying something like "Cannot find defaults, 
bad installation.  Attempt rebuilding or run Octave using --no-gui option."?

Perhaps on your system the behavior in that scenario is different and 
Octave just exits.

Dan