[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #47658] remove autoload feature of packages

[Carnë Draug]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #47658 (project octave):

> Could someone explain the rationale for the current load mechanism? 

I'm not sure what's your question. Some packages can set themselves to
autoload during install. If they do so, the package will load itself when
Octave starts. However, packages automatically loading themselves are a bad
idea; it should be the user that loads them explicitly (or "automatically" in
octaverc).  See
http://wiki.octave.org/FAQ#How_do_I_automatically_load_a_package_at_Octave_startup.3F

There is no recent Octave Forge package that makes use of autoload (this has
nothing to do with autoload() for oct files, I am only talking about package
autoload).

> IMHO, it would be sensible for the functions of all installed packages to be
available (i.e., on the path, using "addpath(genpath ())") at boot, and that
any .oct files should be linked on demand, rather than requiring all .oct
files for a given package to be loaded at once.

No, we do not want to load all packages automatically. We have been there
before.  It ends with users annoyed about weird Octave because they loaded
packages that incompatible or change how octave core works.  See
http://wiki.octave.org/FAQ#How_do_install_or_load_all_Octave_packages.3F

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