Re: [PATCH] [RFC] graphics/MesaLib with osmesa and software-only rendering

[coypu%sdf.org@localhost]

On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 12:29:01PM +0200, Dr. Thomas Orgis wrote:
> Well, you still want plots, right? But I guess there should be a
> possible build for CLI-only that uses only gnuplot for plotting. The
> other OpenGL-based backends triggered me delving into the scary world
> of the MesaLib package. I went through it as there are always some
> visualisation programs that need MesaLib and it helps having a
> reference installation that works nicely over SSH.
> 
> Btw., my local octave has several added options now:
> 
> PKG_OPTIONS.octave+= glpk graphicsmagick openblas suitesparse gl2ps qrupdate
> 
> The latter two are added locally. It's only missing audio playback(!)
> and the qscintilla component now. I can live with that. As an octave
> user, did you miss proper BLAS, qrupdate and the sparse matrix stuff?
> I'm not a user myself, just wondering what build makes sense to offer
> as a tentative alternative to Matlab at least for some tasks.
> 
> I'm in the process of posting the resulting patches … probablly to the
> tech-pkg list, though.
> 

I accidentially introduced a circular dependency in my first interaction
with MesaLib :-)

I use the gnuplot backend already, I've had problems with the gl backend
probably because I'm using old nouveau as a driver and it supports a lot
less fancy OpenGL stuff.

The biggest issue for me with octave from pkgsrc is that I don't seem to
be able to install packages from octave forge, I haven't figured out why.
I should investigate more / open a bug report for it.

I'm not a heavier user so I didn't notice the absence of optimizations,
but I bet people who are would appreciate it a lot! worse performance
seems to be the biggest complaint about Octave.

I've used Octave a lot and prefer it, but I haven't given MATLAB an
honest try - it was "develop on own machine, using favourite editor
and comfortable OS, possibly at home" vs. a library Windows machine.
(I didn't try to get a license)