Re: Writing 'help' functions as m-files

[John W. Eaton]

On 23-Jan-2009, Søren Hauberg wrote:

| tor, 22 01 2009 kl. 18:30 -0500, skrev John W. Eaton:
| > One thing I noticed is that lookfor prints syntax error message if
| > there are syntax errors in functions in the load-path.  I think we
| > need to find some way to avoid doing that.  Can it be done with a
| > try/catch block or do we need something else?
| 
| Could you provide an example?
| 
| > Is there more to do?  I remember some discussion about cache files and
| > needing to generate those when Octave is installed.  Am I remembering
| > correctly?  Can you do that, or explain what needs to be done?
| 
| Basically, we need to call 'gen_doc_cache ()' at some point. This
| function traverses the 'path ()' and generates a cache in each
| directory. A cache is just a simple '.mat' file that contains the help
| texts of the files in the directory. I am not sure when it is best to do
| this
| 
|   * when Octave is built, or
|   * when Octave is installed.
| 
| I'm guessing both will work. I'm guessing that the easiest solution is
| to run 'octave --eval gen_doc_cache ()' at the end of the installation.

I think it should be done at build time so that running Octave in
place will work.  Then the generated files can be installed.

jwe