Installing Octave port into new Mavericks system fails

[Jerry]

On May 9, 2014, at 1:25 AM, Jerry <lanceboyle at qwest.net> wrote:

> 
> On May 9, 2014, at 12:58 AM, MK-MacPorts at techno.ms wrote:
> 
>> Hi Jerry,
>> 
>> octave isn’t building these days
> 
> This is TERRIBLE news! I would never have upgraded my OS had I known this.
> 
>> on 10.9 because of atlas [1].
> 
> I get:
> $ port installed atlas
> The following ports are currently installed:
>  atlas @3.10.1_5+gcc48 (active)
> 
>> 
>> Can you verify that you’re seeing the same error?
> 
> Not if I understand the above result. Doesn't that indicate that atlas is installed?
>> 
>> Ticket responder Vince obviously managed to get it to run on his end, but it’s unclear how...
>> 
>> Greets,
>> Marko
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [1] https://trac.macports.org/ticket/42160
> 
> FWIW the thread there mentions gcc48 and FWIW I used variant +gcc48, as in
>  sudo port install octave +atlas+docs+fltk+gcc48
> 
> If you look at my original post (with some generated output), all it says is that a bunch of dependencies were not installed but it doesn't give a clue why or what to do about it.
> 
> Jerry

Hold on for a while--I think Octave is now building, or at least some more dependencies. I did do sudo port clean octave but to no effect. But here's what I think happened. I mentioned in my original post that my first attempt (today) to install Octave stalled when Java was needed. I was required to click a dialog box to agree to install Java, and I think this (needing to click) might have caused the stall. But I _think_ that what happened is that when the Java installation finished it put up another dialog box ("OK" or the like) which got buried in the mess of windows on my screen and I didn't see it until a few minutes ago. :-/ So I dismissed the dialog and tried installing Octave again and things seem to be progressing nicely.

I'll let you know how this turns out but for now I'll just wipe the egg off my face, if you'll allow me an odd Americanism.

In the meantime, for any Octave users who might be reading this, over at octave.org there is a .dmg download (650 MB) of Octave 3.8, whereas the latest MacPorts version is 3.6.4. The significance of this is that 3.8 has a beta version of the long-awaited GUI. Yea! I'm downloading it right now. I popped the obvious question to the MacPorts Octave maintainer a while back and he has indicated that he can get 3.8.x ported later this year.

Jerry