Hhmmm... Ben, what exactly do you mean by "messy conflict can arise" - this
sounds to me like you can't use Fink packages anymore if Octave.app is installed?
Fink doesn't know anything about Octave.app even if it is installed and
therefore Fink can't use any of Octave.app's libraries. Octave.app doesn't use
Fink's libraries but uses it's own (Octave.app brings all the necessary
libraries needed to run on its own and doesn't install anything anywhere else on
a user's harddisc). Fink shouldn't modify files that hard on a harddisc either,
isn't it?
So where do that messy conflicts arise? My knowledge is that people using
Fink-Octave and Octave.app both on one and the same machine can use both without
conflicting or damaging each other (maybe they can't use Octave.app and
Octave-Fink at the same time)...
This actually is a feature of a standalone application *.app from my point of
view that doesn't work if somebody mixes distribution installations?!
Thomas
I'll qualify my prior comment with "I haven't actually tried installing Octave via
Fink and via a standalone version at the same time".
Based upon what I've read from others, my understanding is that conflicts can
arise if different versions of octave, different version of gnuplot, and/or
different versions of aquaterm are installed at the same time.