Re: what to do about dependencies?

[Ben Abbott]

On Jan 9, 2012, at 6:15 PM, Thomas Weber wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 05:11:22PM -0500, Ben Abbott wrote:
> 
>> I'd like the idea of bundling the dependencies as it would simplify
>> creating an app-bundle for MacOS X (windows too, I assume).
> 
> Will it really simplify that? If users cannot build the separate
> dependencies, how are they supposed to build them as one tarball?
> 
>       Thomas

Its not a question of building, but of locating, downloading, building, and 
installing all the dependencies.

On MacOS, Octave and all its dependencies can be bundled into to app. This can 
result in multiple copies of lapack, fftw, readline, etc existing on an 
individuals computer, but they are essentially encapsulated in the bundle so 
there are no conflicts with other copies.

Personally, I prefer to maintain my dependencies via a package manager. 
However, most MacOS users are in the habit of downloading an app-bundle and 
then drag-n-dropping it into the Applications directory (very convenient).

Even so, I don't want to send the message that I'm a strong supporter of 
bundling all the dependencies with Octave. I suspect it may be possible to 
write a script to effectively construct an app bundle and populate it will all 
the required libraries. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to give it a try and 
am a bit worried I may be naive about the difficulty involved.

Ben