From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Wed Dec 24 05:48:22 2003 Subject: Re: Failure (Re: How to use octave-forge?) From: Christoph Dalitz To: Paul Kienzle Cc: vic at norton dot name, persquare@mac.com, help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 12:46:41 +0100 On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 21:48:06 -0500 Paul Kienzle wrote: > > Is this a problem with the fink/ports infrastructure? Or is it a > matter of > there being no one doing the wonderful work that Dirk Eddelbuettel > does for Octave+octave-forge in Debian? > > If it is a lack of infrastructure, would it be reasonable to put > together a > binary package like we have for Windows and distribute it from the > octave-forge site? My inclination is to use the Ports install path, or > possibly opt/loctave. > > Any thoughts? > I would suggest using EPM (http://www.easysw.com/epm/), which can create DEB-, RPM-, OSX- or whatever packages from a single *.list file. All we then need is a octave.list and octave-forge.list file describing the destination of the files to install (eg. into /usr/local). Then "epm -f deb" builds a Debian package and "epm -f osx" and so on. The generated binary packages should then be offered on the octave download site. This would remove the dependency on third party packagers and the need for a "finkification", "debianification", "solarisifictaion" etc. of octave. Concerning a binary version for OSX, a native OSX package cannot be uninstalled (this may have changed with Panther, please let me know if anyone knows more details). Thus it is preferable to use EPM's "portable" package format which includes a FLTK based graphical setup routine. Christoph Dalitz ------------------------------------------------------------- Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL. Octave's home on the web: http://www.octave.org How to fund new projects: http://www.octave.org/funding.html Subscription information: http://www.octave.org/archive.html -------------------------------------------------------------