Re: "features" problems

[John W. Eaton]

On 03/19/2016 05:06 PM, Philip Nienhuis wrote:

> In the io package libdir is used in a.o., chk_spreadsheet_support.m to
> find subdirs where Java class libs can be found. Some Linuces put those
> in /usr/bin or its subdirs.
>
> api version + other info like canonical_host_type is currently needed to
> find out where the arch-dependent package modules are located;

Exactly why is api_version needed separately?  In't it already embedded 
in the api_version directory variables?

But anyway, I intend to remove API_VERSION.  I don't think it was ever 
reliable, it changed with every release, and it was only intended to 
prevent people from loading .oct files that were compiled for different 
versions of Octave (presumably linked against incompatible versions of 
the Octave libraries).  Now that we use shared library versioning and (I 
think) do a better job of maintaining that info properly for releases, I 
don't think the API_VERSION is particularly useful.

jwe