Re: bio-formats package for octave released

[Philip Nienhuis]

Carnë Draug wrote:
> On 16 September 2015 at 18:52, Philip Nienhuis <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Carnë Draug wrote:
> > > On 16 September 2015 at 13:52, Carnë Draug wrote:
> > > > On 15 September 2015 at 18:31, Carnë Draug wrote:
> > > > > Hi everyone
> > > > >
> > > > > the bio-formats project [1] has released for the first time an Octave
> > > > > interface [2] to their java library.
> > > > > <snip>
> > > > > It also requires that the bioformats library be available on the
> > > > > system [3] and in the static javaclasspath (the file javaclasspath.txt
> > > > > on the home directory must have a line with the path for
> > > > > bioformats.jar).
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Easier is to just do:
> > > >
> > > > javaaddpath ('/full/path/to/bioformats.jar')
> > > >
> > > > Optionally put that in your .octaverc
> > >
> > >
> > > No.  This does not work.  As I mentioned, it requires that the bioformats
> > > library be available in the static javaclasspath.  Your suggestion will
> > > add
> > > it to the dynamic classpath and will not work.  The octave java interface
> > > behaves differently if the classes are in one or the other.
> >
> >
> > ?? It may be my ignorance but this is the first time I hear about that.
> > AFAIU the classpath only serves to tell Octave (rather: JVM) where to search
> > for Java methods and make them available (load the class lib containing
> > them). Dynamic or static shouldn't make any difference - to my knowledge.
>
> Well, it does.  Just try the PKG_ADD script linked to.  It will fail
> unless the library is on the static classpath.
>
> This is not by design, but the octave java interface
..<snip>...
> works better when things are on the static classpath.

Is that always and unconditionally true?

>    There is a bug
> report about it [1].

Ah, if you had mentioned this right away in the bio-formats announcement 
it would have saved a few keystrokes :-)   (and maybe again would have 
drawn attention to this bug)

>   I think there are others but I can't find them now.
> For example, isa() does not work properly there (again, try the PKG_ADD
> script I linked before).
>
> > Is it anywhere documented what the exact difference in functional behavior
> > is between static and dynamic classpath (apart from maybe faster loading) ?
>
> No.  Only in bug reports.  It's not that the difference is on purpose.

... but nevertheless it's worth mentioning where appropriate.

Thanks for the explanation, Carnë

Philip