Re: Coursera: about Octave

[Ben Abbott]

On Dec 13, 2012, at 10:03 AM, Pascal Dupuis wrote:

> 2012/12/13 Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>:
>> On 12 December 2012 18:44,  <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 
>>> I would like to introduce myself as a Course Operations guy at
>>> Coursera. I saw your post in threads about the difficulty of
>>> installing Octave on the new Mac OSX. We would like to look into the
>>> problem and work with GNU to make some fix here. Can you give me a
>>> summary of the specific issues you've seen in installing Octave on
>>> OSX?
>> 
>> We're having trouble creating a dmg for Octave. The situation is
>> basically the following:
>> 
>>    http://wiki.octave.org/Create_a_MacOS_X_App_Bundle_Using_MacPorts
>> 
>> Ben Abbot (cc'ed here along with the Octave maintainers' list) has
>> been doing most of this work. I'm sure he will be glad to have your
>> help.
>> 
>> - Jordi G. H.
> 
> OTOH, the MacPort project as both a stable and a devel version of
> octave. Installing octave is just a matter of typing:
> sudo port -v install octave-devel
> 
> in a terminal. Actually,  the 'dmg' target works too ("port dmg
> octave-devel'), but this requires an app called "PackageMaker.App",
> for which I didn't manage to find a source, even on the Apple
> Development Center.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Pascal

The macports command "port dmg <portname>" will produce a dmg that allows the 
port and all its build and runtime dependencies included.  The install will be 
in the standard macports directory structure and should not be used on 
computers with an existing macports installation.  It is also my understanding 
that the dmg does not include the macports package management.

In any event, the App bundle I've been working on does use this command as a 
starting point and then creates as bundled application which may be relocated 
any where without encountering path problems.

The one area I remain nervous about is creating oct-files and mex-files.  
However, I have been successful with simple "Hello World" examples (not sure if 
I've updated the wiki with respect to that).

Ben