Re: Trying to compile Octave on RHEL 7.3

[Mike Miller]

On Thu, Mar 02, 2017 at 10:02:51 -0800, Michael Metts wrote:
> ok.  i’m doing a test build now.  i’ll download 4.2.1 and try the same
> techniques on that.  i looked at the Sundails site the other day and
> like Ozzy suggested it looks as though the Sundails I have from EPEL
> was compiled without the IDAKLU switch … even though i thought i read
> that it was the default.  i was tempted to build Sundials myself but
> maybe i’ll leave well enough alone at this point.

I think you're right, I have the log file you sent also, and it looks
the same as on my distribution (Debian testing), the sundials IDA
library is available, but IDAKLU is not. This is a fairly new feature in
both sundials and in Octave, so still shaking out.

> i would like to help out but i’m so terribly green at build/make and
> such.  it’s been years since i actually programmed in C or C++ … or
> even Fortran so i’d be embarrassed at the results i’d get with any
> serious mucking about with a build such as this.
> 
> i would be open to being an ignorant build tester, though.  we are
> likely to focus on RHEL and AIX here at my firm indefinitely.  we have
> a lot of PhD, Finance and Econ folks that want and expect Matlab … but
> we’d rather not run it on RHEL.  it’s expensive enough on Windows.
> it’s possible that some RHEL Octave build here could become “mission
> critical” for some analysis in the future.  but for now, it’s more
> about showing/proving that this is a great or “good enough”
> alternative and the 48-core RHEL system will lure them in.
> 
> thanks for all your help.  with the above in mind, let me know what
> you recommend re: me participating.  

If you're willing to do occasionally build tests of the dev branch on
your RHEL+EPEL setup, I think that would be helpful to catch errors that
might otherwise go unnoticed until after a release. When I used to have
daily access to RHEL 5 and 6 at work, I would do this kind of occasional
build testing to make sure everything still works.

Even better would be a RHEL+EPEL system that could run a continuous
build script and integrate with our CI system
(http://buildbot.octave.org:8010/). We have plenty of Fedora and Debian
coverage, but we have not had anyone volunteer a CentOS or RHEL system
yet.

-- 
mike