Windows Installer: Difference between revisions

* If you have several mxe-octave build dirs (for e.g., stable and several development versions) it is handy to have a separate {{Path|pkg}} subdirectory where all mxe-octave build directories link to via an symbolic link, for example. That saves a lot of downloading bandwidth.

* As of late December 2015, [https://hg.octave.org/mxe-octave/rev/0962acdde3be mxe-octave allows out-of-tree builds]. This makes it easier to build separate Octave versions with the same mxe-octave tree.

* To keep mxe-octave up-to-date, from time to time do:

* However, do not keep mxe-octave build dirs for too long. I'd suggest to wipe a build dir after at most two or three months and start over with a fresh clone, see [#General steps|general steps].

* In the mean time, regularly clean up {{Path|<mxe-octave build>/log}} to save disk space. After a first successful build there is no more use for the log subdirectories for each package. One can safely wipe them all.

* It can happen that you meet problems with Java. To build Octave with Java support built-in, mxe-octave needs:

** A Java JDK (Java Development Kit) on the '''host''' system. In other words, the javac (Java compiler) and jar (Java archiver) executables should be in the PATH-system-variable.

** Java include files for MS Windows ("w32", even for "w64" builds). They should reside in {{Path|<mxe-octave build dir>/usr/x86_64-w64-mingw32/include/java/win32}}. If they are not present, mxe-octave downloads them automatically, but this can occasionally go wrong. On a multi-boot system a solution (note: dirty hack warning!) is symlinking to the MS Windows include files on the MS Windows partition from the mxe-octave location.