Re: Octave binary naming

[John W. Eaton]

On 10/04/2013 11:35 AM, Dmitry Roshchin wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I'm working on packaging new octave version for openSUSE. Current development
> version (3.7.7) contains binaries "octave" and "octave-cli".
>
> I want to split octave packages to "octave" (for terminal usage) and "octave-
> gui" (for users who want GUI). But in this case it's more logical to have
> "octave" binary instead of "octave-cli" for backward compatibility and
> "octave-gui". Are there any reasons for current naming?

I don't think Octave should change its name just because we add a new 
feature.

The octave-cli binary is not linked with the GUI libraries.  It's 
provided in case you want to save a little space when running Octave 
without the GUI.

The octave binary is linked with the GUI libraries, but it will not 
start the GUI unless it is running interactively.  Things like

  octave myscript
  echo "some command" | octave

will not start the GUI.

Why not package "octave" and "octave-cli" if you want to allow people to 
avoid dragging in all the Qt dependencies if they don't want them? 
Other programs do similar things.  For example, gnuplot and gnuplot-nox 
on my Debian system.

jwe