[Pkg-octave-devel] Octave 4.0.x with GCC 6

[Mike Miller]

Hey all,

I previously proposed trying to package the upcoming Octave 4.2 release
in time for the stretch freeze [1]. I still think this is possible and a
worthwhile goal.

I noticed recently that Fedora has patched Octave 4.0.3 to successfully
compile with GCC 6. This was not conveyed back upstream, so I had no
idea until this week that this was possible or practical.

The Fedora patches [2] look like they do the following:

 * Global replace s/cmath/math.h/ and s/cstdlib/stdlib.h/
 * Add math.h to Faddeeva.hh
 * Declare some inline abs overloads in pr-output.cc
 * Fix upstream bug #47449 [3]

I plan to attempt a local build of Octave 4.0.3 with the first 3 changes
applied. I will report back when I have a result from that test.

If this can be applied to octave/sid, that would eliminate the RC bug
pressure and make 4.0.3 releasable, just in case the upstream release
schedule slips or the liboctave4 transition doesn't happen in time for
stretch.

[1]: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-octave-devel/2016-June/012275.html
[2]: http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/octave.git/tree/
[3]: https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?47449

-- 
mike