Re: Suggestion: startup.d subdirectory for use by octaverc

[James R. Phillips]

--- Paul Kienzle  wrote:


> Anything in the system path is automatically located in octave.  If it 
> is not on the system path, but in some personal path, you can add e.g., 
> LOADPATH=["~/octave//:",LOADPATH] to your .octaverc file and all 
> packages within ~/octave and all its subdirectories will be 
> automatically loaded.
> 

I detect a certain lack of enthusiasm for my idea ;).

Sure, I am aware of this feature.  I'm thinking in terms of system
administration and packaging design, not so much of user-installed packages. 
Actually, I'm thinking ahead to producing an octave-forge package for cygwin,
and it seemed this feature might be handy, to eliminate the need for a
post-install script that adds the octave-forge load path by editing octaverc.

The problem-solving principle here is one of generalization - easier to solve
the general problem than the specific one. [Polya]

But no matter.  If the general problem is of little interest, a more specific
solution will do.

BTW, you're an octave-forge developer, I believe?  I have found that the
octave-forge makefile structure doesn't seem to support "out of tree" builds. 
This is a commonly used method to keep the source tree clean during the build,
and is recommended by cygwin developers for cygwin packages.  If you have any
ideas on how to make octave-forge build "out of tree", I'd be interested in
them.  Otherwise I guess I'll just work around the issue.

Jim Phillips