Re: bio-formats package for octave released

[Carnë Draug]

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 is not perfect and
works better when things are on the static classpath.  There is a bug
report about it [1].  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.

Carnë

[1] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?42710