Octave package location [was: regarding location of Matlab compatible polygon functions]

[Juan Pablo Carbajal]

On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 3:50 AM, LachlanA <address@hidden> wrote:
> Juan Pablo Carbajal-2 wrote
>> The issue at the end is that we are working with a pretty primitive
>> way fo adding dependencies and we need to live with it.
>
> I agree.  It would be nice for Octave to do what some TeX installations do:
> if a package is not installed then if an component in it is referred to and
> an Internet connection can be established, the package is just downloaded
> and installed.  Of course, it would be good to prompt the users, indicating
> the download size and installed size.
>
> Aside from permissions issues (is there a safe way to allow Octave to write
> to /usr/local? **) I think that would be a nice model to aim for.  Then it
> doesn't matter too much where functions are located, and the smaller the
> package the better.  (In answer to Carnë's question, in that world we may
> want packages containing a single function that is isarray...  Of course,
> that may make release management much messier so most packages would be
> larger than a single function.)
>
> ** I notice that the current install makes
> /usr/local/share/octave/octave-4.1.0+ owned by root.  Would it be sensible
> to create an Octave group to allow Octave to install new packages safely?
> I've never delved into Octave's package installation process.
>
> Cheers,
> Lachlan
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: 
> http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Re-regarding-location-of-Matlab-compatible-polygon-functions-tp4676164p4676166.html
> Sent from the Octave - Maintainers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

Hi Lachian,

It might be useful for your to keep your installation at the user
level (I do this unless I am admin of a public machine, in which case
I use debian package manager).
You do this with

pkg prefix ~/.octave/ ~/.octave;

Then octave will install packages in ~/.octave