Re: pkg manager and installing binary files (DLL)

[Michael Goffioul]

On 5/20/07, David Bateman <address@hidden> wrote:
> Then this is another reason to hate windows. On unix systems I don't
> need the separate library as I can link to the oct-file, and even if I
> did I could load it from a path changed from a running version of Octave.
>
> There is no sensible way to do this under windows then, as the fixed.dll
> would have to be copied to the octave install directory and not a
> directory private to the fixed package.
>
> Michael, its your call.. If you want to install fixed.dll beside
> octave.dll, thats fine with me. Otherwise I'll just build the dll into
> fixed.oct and Windows users won't be able to use the fixed type from
> within an oct-file...

Nothing prevents you to link against an oct-file, provided that the oct-file
exports the required symbols. So, theoretically, you could merge fixed.oct
and octave_fixed.dll and make fixed.oct exports the symbols of the DLL.
This creates an import lib file that you can use to link against fixed.oct.

I'll try to investigate this; this probably requires some hacks in the
Makefile's.
As an easy workaround, for the time being, I'd copy the DLL to the octave
bin directory in on_install.m (and remove it in on_uninstall.m). This will only
affect the Win32 version of octave anyway.

Michael.