Re: mex files for different architectures

[John W. Eaton]

On 22-Mar-2008, Xavier Delacour wrote:

| Glancing at pkg.m, it should be possible to construct a package with
| the following structure:
| 
| tar tzf myfunc-1.0.tar.gz
| myfunc-1.0/
| myfunc-1.0/DESCRIPTION
| myfunc-1.0/inst/
| myfunc-1.0/inst/i486-pc-linux-gnu-api-v24/
| myfunc-1.0/inst/i486-pc-linux-gnu-api-v24/myfunc.mex
| myfunc-1.0/inst/another-arch/
| myfunc-1.0/inst/another-arch/myfunc.mex
| myfunc-1.0/COPYING
| myfunc-1.0/PKG_ADD
| myfunc-1.0/INDEX
| 
| Octave will load (pkg.m will call addpath on) the appropriate
| directory based on its arch.
| arch = strcat(octave_config_info("canonical_host_type"), "-",
| octave_config_info("api_version"))
| 
| That's one way to do it. I don't imagine arch-dependent mex/oct
| suffixes are difficult to implement, but I have not looked closely.
| Calling addpath yourself based on arch (as you suggest) is probably
| the easiest way to solve your problem.

This sort of layout is encouraged by systems that prefer separating
architechture dependent files from architecture independent files.
But it conflicts with the typical way Matlab's toolboxes work, which
is that adding a toolbox only requires adding a single directory to
the path.  So it seems this presents a compatibility problem.

If you think it would be worth handling multiple .mex file extensions
in a way that is compatible with Matlab, then I'd suggest discussing
this on the octave-maintainers list.

jwe