Re: unable to install packages into octave in Windows 7

[Nicholas Jankowski]

On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 8:06 AM, ajiten <address@hidden> wrote:

I am a complete beginner for programming.
I have installed octave 3.8.2 in Windows 7.
If I use the command,  pkg install -forge io, then I get the error:

error: get_forge_pkg: could not read URL, please verify internet connection
error: called from:
error:
E:\Octave\Octave-3.8.2\share\octave\3.8.2\m\pkg\private\get_forge_pkg.m at
line 76, column 7
error:
E:\Octave\Octave-3.8.2\share\octave\3.8.2\m\pkg\private\get_forge_download.m
at line 26, column 12
error:   E:\Octave\Octave-3.8.2\share\octave\3.8.2\m\pkg\pkg.m at line 385,
column 29

As being a newbie, I tried to google out; & accordingly put values of
environment variables: http_proxy & http_port; although did not check if
there was already there some value beforehand. May be octave picks up
automatically values (cannot at least tell now!).
Anyway, the error persists with the same description.

See: http://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_Microsoft_Windows

Curious why you're using such an old version of Octave? Did you find some place online that pointed you to this old version? The current version is 4.2.1, and the Windows version is available for both 32 and 64 bit from here:
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/windows/

There have been a number of changes since then, including security changes that prevent older versions of the pkg command from automatically fetching packages from the website.

If you need to use 3.8.2 for some reason, you need to manually download the package file from https://octave.sourceforge.io/packages.php and then run:

pkg install packagename-1.2.3.tar.gz