Re: Writing 'help' functions as m-files

[Søren Hauberg]

tir, 27 01 2009 kl. 11:48 -0500, skrev John W. Eaton:
> On 23-Jan-2009, Soren Hauberg wrote:
> | > 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.

First of all, sorry about the late reply...

So, I'd like to run 'gen_doc_cache' when Octave is built, which I guess
boils down to

  ./run-octave --eval gen_doc_cache

But I fear this won't work. The 'gen_doc_cache' function simply
traverses the current path and creates a cache for each directory in the
path. The problem is that the path seems to be different when running
'./run-octave', than when running an installed octave. Specifically, in
'./run-octave' we have

  /home/sh/Dokumenter/octave/octave-hg/upstream/src
  /home/sh/Dokumenter/octave/octave-hg/upstream/src/OPERATORS
  /home/sh/Dokumenter/octave/octave-hg/upstream/src/TEMPLATE-INST
  /home/sh/Dokumenter/octave/octave-hg/upstream/src/DLD-FUNCTIONS
  /home/sh/Dokumenter/octave/octave-hg/upstream/src/pic

in the path, whereas in an installed Octave we have

  /home/sh/Programmer//libexec/octave/3.1.51+/site/oct/i686-pc-linux-gnu
  /home/sh/Programmer//libexec/octave/site/oct/api-v33
+/i686-pc-linux-gnu
  /home/sh/Programmer//libexec/octave/site/oct/i686-pc-linux-gnu
  /home/sh/Programmer//share/octave/3.1.51+/site/m
  /home/sh/Programmer//share/octave/site/api-v33+/m

in the path. So, if I run 'gen_doc_cache' via './run-octave' the path
I'll be traversing won't correspond to the path that's available when
Octave is installed.

Any thoughts or comments?

Soren