Re: globally installed packages vs. relocatable Octave

[Juan Pablo Carbajal]

On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 7:25 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> Currently, the absolute directory name corresponding to a globally
> installed package is saved in the octave_packages file.  This causes
> trouble for relocating an Octave installation.
>
> It is also possible to set the "prefix" for global package
> installations.  This may be done independently for each installed
> package.  Additionaly, the "prefix" for architecture dependent files
> must be set separately, as well as the location of the file that
> contains the list of installed packages.
>
> Is it necessary to allow the global prefix to be modified, or would it
> be OK to simply expect that globally installed packages are located in
> a directory under OCTAVE_HOME?  If we could assume this, then the
> package database file would not have to contain the full directory
> name for globally installed packages and it would be easier to
> relocate an installation of Octave that includes globally installed
> packages.
>
> My motivation here is to make it easier to build a binary package for
> Windows (for example) that includes a set of pre-installed packages
> and that can be easily installed in any directory on the system.
>
> jwe
>

If the package is globally installed I would expect that things are
handled system wise rather than user wise. Os it seems to me, tat
fixing the installation folder for global packages is a good way to
go.

Are we porting pkg.m form here [1] to core? I will be wiling to help
if that is the case.
[1] 
https://bitbucket.org/carandraug/octave/branch/default?head=d670ed4e5ae64541056dec352af0901270a381c9

This pkg.m is more modular than the current version.