Re: Mac OS X champion

[Ben Abbott]

> On Feb 10, 2015, at 14:03, Rik <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> 2/10/15
> 
> Maintainers,
> 
> There are a large number of bugs on the 4.0 Release list
> (http://wiki.octave.org/Bug_Fix_List_-_4.0_Release) that relate in one way
> or another to Mac OS X.  Sometimes the issue is not being able to build,
> often there are crashes with plotting.  Many core developers are using
> Linux and so the development branch does not receive sufficient testing on
> Macs.  Is there a developer with extensive Mac experience who is willing to
> be a champion for the platform for the 4.0 release?  This person would
> consolidate the existing bugs (lots of duplicates regarding crashes with
> plotting), determine who can help and what architectural coding decisions
> need to be made, and implement them or ask for help as necessary.
> 
> Without a champion, I don't think the existing core developers can address
> the Mac platform issues.  We would simply have to go forward with the 4.0
> release and place the Mac bugs into the queue for the 4.2 release.
> 
> --Rik

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to take this on, but I thought I'd comment 
on the Mac OSX problems.

In my opinion there are only two serious problems.

(1) The OpenGL toolkits do not work on Mac OSX when running the GUI.
(2) Octave does not build on Yosemite (latest release of Mac OSX)

As far as I know, the remaining problems/bugs are due to building being fragile 
on OSX, differences between versions of OSX, and conflicts between multiple 
installs of gnuplot, Aquaterm, etc.

Ben