Re: packaging system

[Søren Hauberg]

Sorry about taking my time replying, but the weather is great in Denmark 
 :-)

Bill Denney wrote:
> Toolboxes could work as follows:
>
> They become packages with no specific functions.  When a package is part 
> of a toolbox, it is symlinked into the toolbox directory, and within the 
> toolbox directory is effectively nothing.  Then, when "help toolboxname" 
> is called, it will scan each subdirectory for functions.  This could be 
> done as follows:
>
> OCTAVE_PACKAGE_DIR/package-1.1/
> OCTAVE_PACKAGE_DIR/package2-4.8/
> OCTAVE_PACKAGE_DIR/toolbox-1.0/
>                                package-1.1 -> ../package-1.1
>                                package2-4.8 -> ../package2-4.8
>
> where the package directories are symlinks.
Couldn't this create an infinite loop?

OCTAVE_PACKAGE_DIR/package-1.1/
                               package2-4.8 -> ../package2-4.8
OCTAVE_PACKAGE_DIR/package2-4.8/
                               package-1.1 -> ../package-1.1


> Another option would be to have a similar functionality, but have a 
> single file in the toolbox-1.0 directory (along with the package 
> symlinks) named toolbox.m (where toolbox is the name of the toolbox).  
> This file would give a brief description when help is run on it, and 
> perhaps tell you to run it as as "toolbox" from the command line to get 
> a list of functions (where toolbox.m could be essentially generic with 
> the exception of the description).
In the end this is properly a good solution, the problem is that this 
solution is very static. If the toolbox uses function F from package P 
and P is updated with a change in F, then the toolbox would have to be 
updated as well to reflect this change.

/Søren

> Symlinks may interfere with octave's function finding routines (i.e. 
> there would be two locations in the directory tree where the same file 
> is located), so simply having each package drop a file into the toolkit 
> directory may work.
>
> Bill