Re: startup with .octaverc on Windows Vista

[Benjamin Lindner]

Bart Vandewoestyne wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 01:43:26PM -0500, Richardson, Anthony wrote:
> > We have a similar setup.   We set HOME in the
> > C:/octave/3.22.2_gcc-4.3.0/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc
> > file, with the following lines:
> >
> > setenv('HOME','h:\');
> > cd ~;
> >
> > This allows the octave HOME env variable to be set differently 
> > than a Vista global HOME environment variable.  An .octaverc 
> > file in h:\ is still executed.  Setting HOME from Windows
> > should work too, but we have other software that uses the HOME
> > environment variable and requires that it be set to something
> > else.
> >
> > Tony Richardson
>
> Thanks for your reply, Tony.  In our computer-rooms, we are doing
> it now the way you describe, and everything works nicely.  The
> Octave desktop-icon is now shining on all our student-computers
> :-)
>
> I do have another question related to the installer though...
>
> For our sysadmins, it would be comfortable if they can do a
> silent (unattended) install.  For as far as I can see, Octave
> uses the NSIS installer system (http://nsis.sourceforge.net) and
> it has an option /S with which one can do a silent install (see
> for example http://unattended.sourceforge.net/installers.php)
>
> However, if one performs a silent install, then apparently the
> installation is done with the *default* options, that is, no
> Octave-Forge packages are installed and one cannot select another
> Atlas library.
>
> Is it somehow possible to do a silent (unattended) install *with*
> specifying that Octave-Forge should also be installed?  Does the
> NSIS installer system allow a user to specify certain
> installation options somehow?

This is indeed a good question.
I did consult the NSIS manual, and it seems that there is no supoprt for 
an answer file for unattended installs, which means it would need to be 
programmed by hand.
I am not an expert on nsis, and frankly I am not overly eager to start 
coding this by hand.

One possibility that you can try is to install octave once in the 
configuration desired, and then simply copy the entire directory tree 
as-is to a different computer. Octave itself is relocatable, and it is 
portable, so there is no need to install it to get a running version.
What's not fully relocatable at the moment is the octave-forge packages 
(the package manager keeps track of absolute installation paths).
So in order to get a copied directory tree working you need to start 
octave and execute "pkg rebuild".
You can omit this step if you copy octave into the same path on a remote 
computer (since then no paths actually have changed, it's just a 
different machine).

What you cannot do this way however is to get different ATLAS architectures.

benjamin