additional packages

[Thomas Treichl]

Ben Abbott schrieb:
>> Hhmmm... Ben, what exactly do you mean by "messy conflict can arise" - this 
>> sounds to me like you can't use Fink packages anymore if Octave.app is installed?
>>
>> Fink doesn't know anything about Octave.app even if it is installed and 
>> therefore Fink can't use any of Octave.app's libraries. Octave.app doesn't use 
>> Fink's libraries but uses it's own (Octave.app brings all the necessary 
>> libraries needed to run on its own and doesn't install anything anywhere else on 
>> a user's harddisc). Fink shouldn't modify files that hard on a harddisc either, 
>> isn't it?
>>
>> So where do that messy conflicts arise? My knowledge is that people using 
>> Fink-Octave and Octave.app both on one and the same machine can use both without 
>> conflicting or damaging each other (maybe they can't use Octave.app and 
>> Octave-Fink at the same time)...
>>
>> This actually is a feature of a standalone application *.app from my point of 
>> view that doesn't work if somebody mixes distribution installations?!
>>
>>   Thomas
>>
> 
> I'll qualify my prior comment with "I haven't actually tried installing Octave via Fink and via a standalone version at the same time".
> 
> Based upon what I've read from others, my understanding is that conflicts can arise if different versions of octave, different version of gnuplot, and/or different versions of aquaterm are installed at the same time.

... that are all found somewhere on your common system paths (at least bin path 
and lib path), right. Octave.app isolates from system paths - that's why Fink 
doesn't see anything from Octave.app - and Octave.app uses it's own system paths 
- that's why Fink doesn't conflict Octave.app.

> The different versions of octave shouldn't be a problem unless ~/.octaverc includes path information.

... right, then we really would have a problem (like we had in the discussion 
with the savepath command that overwrites .octaverc). But even packages can be 
handled correctly if we have Octave-Fink and Octave.app installed, this time if 
we use the -global option for pkg.m, then Octave-Fink packages should go 
somewhere into /sw/... and Octave.app packages should go into 
/Applications/Octave.app/...

   Thomas