Re: globally installed packages vs. relocatable Octave

[Carnë Draug]

On 6 November 2014 18:25, 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.

What I proposed some years ago (and unfortunately never had enough time to
write) was something similar.  I think it is desirable to have have global
packages installed somewhere such "localfcnfiledir" or "localapioctfiledir"
which can be managed by a sysadmin.  If we decide on such place, there is no
need for absolute path.  For local installs (we could use a place such as
$XDG_DATA_HOME) which would give us, again, no absolute paths.

Part of the problem is that pkg is not able to handle multiple installations
of the same package so what will happen when there is a global and local
install of the same package?

Carnë