Re: packaging system

[Bill Denney]

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005, Stefan van der Walt wrote:

> Anyway, I don't see it being a major hassle: include an INDEX file
> with each package, and let Octave parse those index files whenever
> someone wants help('toolbox').  We have the code to do so already.

Here's what strikes me as the simplest solution: a modification to the 
help function.

Toolboxes could work as follows:

They become packages with no specific functions.  When a package is part 
of a toolbox, it is symlinked into the toolbox directory, and within the 
toolbox directory is effectively nothing.  Then, when "help toolboxname" 
is called, it will scan each subdirectory for functions.  This could be 
done as follows:

OCTAVE_PACKAGE_DIR/package-1.1/
OCTAVE_PACKAGE_DIR/package2-4.8/
OCTAVE_PACKAGE_DIR/toolbox-1.0/
                               package-1.1 -> ../package-1.1
                               package2-4.8 -> ../package2-4.8

where the package directories are symlinks.

Another option would be to have a similar functionality, but have a single 
file in the toolbox-1.0 directory (along with the package symlinks) named 
toolbox.m (where toolbox is the name of the toolbox).  This file would 
give a brief description when help is run on it, and perhaps tell you to 
run it as as "toolbox" from the command line to get a list of functions 
(where toolbox.m could be essentially generic with the exception of the 
description).

Symlinks may interfere with octave's function finding routines (i.e. there 
would be two locations in the directory tree where the same file is 
located), so simply having each package drop a file into the toolkit 
directory may work.

Bill

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