Re: Roll back octave package dependencies?

[Andrew Janke]

On 4/23/20 4:45 AM, Ian McCallion wrote:
> On Thursday, 23 April 2020, Kai Torben Ohlhus <address@hidden
> <mailto:address@hidden>> wrote:
> 
>     In general, it should not harm to have those extra packages
>     installed and the required disk space should neither overwhelm a
>     standard desktop or laptop.
> 
>     Maybe you can make use of "/var/log/apt/history.log" to identify
>     those packages [1]? 
> 
>  
> I have often thought Octave should have a "redistributable" that can be
> sent to people who don't need or want to run Octave but simply want to
> use an application that uses Octave.
> 
> This can be accomplished with Matlab by compiling the application code
> and sharing it (although accompanied by a fairly large redistributable
> runtime library I believe).
> 
> Cheers... Ian

The Matlab Runtime is a 6 GB install. It's more heavyweight than a
regular Matlab installation for most users, because it includes (most
of) Matlab and all the toolboxes that compiled Matlab code can make use of.

"Compiled" Matlab code produced with the Matlab Compiler isn't compiled
in any real sense - it's just obfuscated M-code, which runs in an
embedded Matlab interpreter that isn't subject to Matlab's normal
licensing restrictions, and doesn't have the Desktop IDE GUI bits.

Something more akin to "frozen" Python applications might be more
appropriate for Octave. But that would be a big install, too: We're sort
of doing that for Octave.app (sans the hypothetical user's actual
application code), and once you pull in all Octave's dependencies, it's
a 2-3 GB install.

"Install Octave, but not the build-time dependencies" might be the best
approach for most users. The IDE-specific parts of Octave probably don't
take up much space, and there are no licensing concerns.

Cheers,
Andrew