Re: Failed to build package build-m4

[Sascha Suessspeck]

Greetings John,

Thanks for your reply. To answer your first question, I downloaded a zip-file from http://hg.octave.org/mxe-octave/ and hit 'autoconfig' in the command prompt while running MINGW32 shell in the background, then './configure', then 'make zip-dist'.

Yes, I did all this on a Windows system. I did try the alternative building Octave natively for Windows, on a Windows system. I ran './configure' in the folder of the patched Octave source code (v4.2.0) and stumbled over the PCRE library and header files that need to be installed. I downloaded and installed (./configure) PCRE, and placed a copy of the pcre folder and related files in the C:\MinGW\include and other folders. However, I could not locate the required pcre_compile file anywhere and am stuck.

Any suggestions in this regard would be gratefully received.

All the best,

Sascha

On 8 December 2016 at 16:22, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:

On 12/07/2016 02:38 PM, Sascha Suessspeck wrote:

Dear all,

When attempting to cross-build Octave and create a development i.e.
patched (bug #39257: handles to nested functions are not yet supported)
version of octave-4.2.0 for Windows with mxe-octave, I get the below
error in the final step of creating the Windows Installer (or just an
archive of the files to install on Windows).

I was doing it using MinGW/MSYS 1.0 having installed the required
packages including msys-m4 1.4.16-2-msys-1.0.17.

Obviously, the download attempt of build-m4-1.4.17 in the final step was
completed successfully and the respective dist archive appears in the
/pkg subfolder.

I must admit that I just assumed both Python and Ghostscript to be
installed on my machine running on Windows XP SP3.

I am by no means an advanced user and would appreciate any hints or
comments in this regard.

Thanks, and best wishes,

Sascha

Extract from the attached log file:

make[5]: *** [binary-io.o] Error 1
make[5]: Leaving directory
`/c/octave/mxe-octave-1cb1ce8f351c/tmp-build-m4/m4-1.4.17.build/lib'
make[4]: *** [all] Error 2
make[4]: Leaving directory
`/c/octave/mxe-octave-1cb1ce8f351c/tmp-build-m4/m4-1.4.17.build/lib'
make[3]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory
`/c/octave/mxe-octave-1cb1ce8f351c/tmp-build-m4/m4-1.4.17.build'
make[2]: *** [all] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory
`/c/octave/mxe-octave-1cb1ce8f351c/tmp-build-m4/m4-1.4.17.build'
make[1]: *** [build-only-build-m4] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/c/octave/mxe-octave-1cb1ce8f351c'

How did you configure mxe-octave?

Are you doing this on a Windows system?  In that case, you are not doing a cross-build, you are building Octave natively for Windows, on a Windows system.

The build-m4 package is one of the first things that mxe-octave builds, not the last.  So if this happened near the end when creating the installer, there's something else going wrong.

jwe