Re: path: octave 3.0.0 can't find itself

[John W. Eaton]

On 27-Dec-2007, Ben Abbott wrote:

| 
| On Dec 27, 2007, at 11:40 AM, Dushan Mitrovich wrote:
| 
| > Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
| >>
| >> On Dec 26, 2007, at 3:26 PM, Dushan Mitrovich wrote:
| >>> I've been using Octave 2.9.15 on a Mac (Intel) under X.4.11.  When
| >>> Octave 3.0.0 became available a few days ago I decided to update my
| >>> installation to it.
| >>>
| >>> Not wanting to dump the older app, residing in /Applications,  
| >>> until I had
| >>> a chance to test the new one, I renamed the old one  
| >>> Octave-2.9.15.app,
| >>> then dragged the new Octave.app from the .dmg file to the /  
| >>> Applications
| >>> folder.  I expected to have to tell the new one the path to search  
| >>> for my
| >>> personal script files and functions.
| >>>
| >>> Instead, when I open the new Octave.app it announces
| >>>
| >>> warning: addpath: /Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/ 
| >>> share/...
| >>>                    octave/2.9.15/m/<filename>
| >>>
| >>> where as in Octave '...' denotes continuation, and '<filename>'  
| >>> refers
| >>> to different files.  To the command 'path' the respond is
| >>>
| >>> /Users/dushanm/Octave
| >>> /Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/share/octave/site/m/
| >>> /Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/share/octave/site/m/ 
| >>> startup
| >>>
| >>> So from somewhere it got correct information about the path to my
| >>> personal files (the first reference), but wrong information about  
| >>> other
| >>> paths.
| >>>
| >>> I looked everywhere on my system for some file that refers to  
| >>> '2.9.15'
| >>> and found exactly 5 files, 4 of them in ~/Trash, with that  
| >>> reference.
| >>> In each case it was in a comment line.  Where in the world is Octave
| >>> getting all this information, much of it wrong?  First I'd like to
| >>> understand this, and second I want to correct it.
| >>
| >> Do you see the file ".octaverc" in your home folder when you type  
| >> "ls -
| >> ah" in a terminal window?
| >
| > BINGO!  Thanks, Ben, that was it.  Spotlight had screwed me up again  
| > by
| > not showing what it considered hidden files.
| >
| >> If so, that is likely where the problem lies.  You can verify by
| >> "cat .octaverc" to see the contents of the path defined in that file.
| >
| > Once I found the file, I edited it (even tho it said 'do not edit') by
| > changing '2.9.15' to '3.0.0' and then Octave came up without  
| > complaint.
| >
| >> I've not tried to set up different versions of Octave on my Mac, so
| >> I'm not much help there.
| >
| > As soon as I'm comfortable with 3.0.0 I'll get rid of the older  
| > version.
| 
| I've had the same problem when upgrading to a newer version ...  
| meaning that you would have encountered the same error even if you had  
| removed the 2.9.15 installation before installing 3.0.0.
| 
| The solution that worked for me was to delete the .octaverc file  
| altogether. I doubt this is a desirable solution for all cases, but if  
| you don't have any information that is local to your setup, I'd  
| recommend deleting the .octaverc file.

Why is there any version-specific path info in your ~/.octaverc file?
Did you add it by hand?  If so, why?

jwe