Re: Ubuntu 12.04 "pkg install" does not work

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On Fri, 2013-09-06 at 09:02 +0200, c. wrote:

> For some reason I personally don't completely understand, the Debian
> packagers of Octave apply patches to pkg.m that make it essentially
> unusable for normal users.

They don't.

What they do is that they split Octave into several packages. The
mkoctfile wrapper goes into liboctave-dev, which isn't installed by
default. There is good reason for this: pkg install is source
distribution, but in Debian and derivatives it's preferred to use
binary distribution. Unless you are going to be compiling programs
that need to link to liboctave, you shouldn't need mkoctfile.

The solution is that we shouldn't be recommending "pkg install" to
anyone except people who want to build Octave packages from source.
And building from source is brittle and complicated, not to mention it
needlessly contributes to global warming. ;-)

- Jordi G. H.