Re: About GDAL and flatpak

[Mike Miller]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 20:12:05 +0200, Gustavo Cao Cancio wrote:
> Is there any simple way of using the Mapping Toolbox along with the provided 
> Octave 5.1.0 flatpak package?
> checking for GDAL... no
> checking for gdal-config... no
> configure: WARNING: GDAL library not found.  Reading of raster files will be 
> disabled.

One option is to just ignore that warning. It looks to me like an
optional feature. Do you know that you need GDAL support? As a non-user
of the mapping pkg, I would start by ignoring that warning and see if I
do need it later.

If you do need GDAL support, the simplest solution would be to install
some version of the GDAL library in your home directory. I haven't done
this, but I assume it would be something like

    - download and extract GDAL source tarball
    - ./configure --prefix=$HOME/gdal
    - make
    - make install
    - install mapping pkg with CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS set as needed

Another solution might be to file a feature request asking the mapping
package maintainers to consider bundling the GDAL library with the
package (https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=additem&group=octave). I'm
not sure if that's a reasonable task for the pkg maintainer or not, but
it's one possible solution.

Another solution might be to file a feature request asking the flatpak
maintainers to include the GDAL library in the Octave flatpak app
(https://github.com/flathub/org.octave.Octave/issues/new). I'm also not
sure if that's a reasonable task, and I'm one of the flatpak
maintainers, but it may be worth reporting and looking at anyway.

Cheers,

-- 
mike