Re: additional packages

[Ben Abbott]

On Friday, February 29, 2008, at 03:52PM, "Thomas Treichl" <address@hidden> 
wrote:
>Ben Abbott schrieb:
>>> 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.
>
>... that are all found somewhere on your common system paths (at least bin 
>path 
>and lib path), right. Octave.app isolates from system paths - that's why Fink 
>doesn't see anything from Octave.app - and Octave.app uses it's own system 
>paths 
>- that's why Fink doesn't conflict Octave.app.

Do you mean to imply that Octave.app includes installations of gnuplot and 
aquaterm and that these are isolated from Fink, and that if these are installed 
via Fink (and are version that are incompatible with Octave.app) that there is 
no problem?

I don't know the answer to that, but have assumed that would be a potential 
problem.

>
>> The different versions of octave shouldn't be a problem unless ~/.octaverc 
>> includes path information.
>
>... right, then we really would have a problem (like we had in the discussion 
>with the savepath command that overwrites .octaverc). But even packages can be 
>handled correctly if we have Octave-Fink and Octave.app installed, this time 
>if 
>we use the -global option for pkg.m, then Octave-Fink packages should go 
>somewhere into /sw/... and Octave.app packages should go into 
>/Applications/Octave.app/...
>

The global option will work fine provided the versions of Octave are compatible 
with the packages, correct?

Personally, I'd like to be able to run different versions of Octave at will. 
Can I do that by installing Octave bundles?

Ben