(related to bug 51632, about Windows users not knowing they have to run a pkg rebuild if they use the (sort of portable) zip installer:
would it ever cause problems if Octave was set to run a 'pkg rebuild' on startup if it detected there was no global octave_packages file? Seems to be the simplest way to modify that build to remove the need for the manual operation.
something like:
if (isempty(file_in_path(fullfile(OCTAVE_HOME(), "share", "octave", "packages"), "octave_packages")))
pkg rebuild;
endif
or
if (exist(pkg("global_list"),"file") == 0)
pkg rebuild;
endif