Re: package manager patch + problem

[Paul Kienzle]

On Feb 28, 2007, at 8:35 AM, David Bateman wrote:

> Paul Kienzle wrote:
> > On Feb 28, 2007, at 5:40 AM, David Bateman wrote:
> >
> > > Michael Goffioul wrote:
> > > > > Looking at autoload(), it doesn't seem to load the file.
> > > > > I suspect the which() command does, but it is not
> > > > > immediately clear from glancing at the code.  Maybe
> > > > > we could use the following instead:
> > > > >
> > > > >     autoload("glog",file_in_loadpath("gf.oct"))
> > > >
> > > > Yes, I also think it's due to "which": if you "which myfun"
> > > > where myfun is an oct-file named myfun.oct, but you don't
> > > > have a corresponding "DEFUN_DLD (myfun, ...)" statement
> > > > in the code, then "which" fails: this means that somehow,
> > > > the oct-file must be loaded and the symbol is searched.
> > > >
> > > > Michael.
> > > Is it better to workaround this with the autoload
> > > commans in the PKG_ADD files or try and figure out
> > > why which is loading the DLD functions and try and
> > > stop it doing it..
> >
> > As it is currently defined, which() is operating on
> > symbol table items, so I don't think you are going
> > to avoid loading the symbol at the same time.
> >
> > My concern with file_in_loadpath() is that it might
> > return relative rather than absolute file filenames
> > (I don't know) but other than that I think it makes
> > it more clear what the autoload is doing.
> >
> > - Paul
> What about the solution in octave itself that uses
>
> autoload ("airy", fullfile (fileparts (mfilename ("fullpath")),
> "besselj.oct"));
>
> in the PKG_ADD file in the directory with besselj.oct.
> mfilename is run on the PKG_ADD file itself and there
> is no concern that the path is not absolute..
>
> The disadvantage is that the PKG_ADD file must be in
> the same directory as the file being autoloaded..

The other disadvantage is that it is ugly.

The documentation for file_in_loadpath says it
returns the absolute path, and testing on
octave 2.1.69 OS X supports this.

- Paul