Autoload not effective.

[Brandon Chang]

Hi!

I'm currently porting octave into iOS. I was not able to compile version 3.6.1, but after two days of work, I compiled version 2.9.19 under iOS. It runs, however, with serious problem – autoload is not working.

When I run octave, it starts with errors complaining about undefined "dispatch". I checked PKG_ADD under the directory that contains dispatch.oct, it is okay. I then tried to run "rand" which should have been loaded by autoload command, no luck. I even tried load rand.oct again, no luck. So below is the output the octave:

=================== Start ========================

iPad:~ root# octave

GNU Octave, version 2.9.19

Copyright (C) 2007 John W. Eaton and others.

This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTIBILITY or

FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  For details, type `warranty'.

Octave was configured for "arm-apple-darwin11.0.0".

Additional information about Octave is available at http://www.octave.org.

Please contribute if you find this software useful.

For more information, visit http://www.octave.org/help-wanted.html

Report bugs to <address@hidden> (but first, please read

http://www.octave.org/bugs.html to learn how to write a helpful report).

For information about changes from previous versions, type `news'.

error: `dispatch' undefined near line 51 column 1

error: near line 51 of file `/usr/local/libexec/octave/2.9.19/oct/arm-apple-darwin11.0.0/PKG_ADD'

error: source: error sourcing file `/usr/local/libexec/octave/2.9.19/oct/arm-apple-darwin11.0.0/PKG_ADD'

error: near line 11 of file `/usr/local/share/octave/2.9.19/m/startup/octaverc'

octave:1> rand

error: `rand' undefined near line 1 column 1

octave:1> autoload("rand","rand.oct");

warning: autoload: `rand.oct' is not an absolute file name

octave:2> rand

error: `rand' undefined near line 2 column 1

octave:2> autoload("rand","/usr/local/libexec/octave/2.9.19/oct/arm-apple-darwin11.0.0/rand.oct");

octave:3> rand

error: `rand' undefined near line 3 column 1

octave:3> 

=================== End ========================

System: iOS version 5.1.1, Darwin 11.0

iPad 1,1.

What I felt strange is that autoload failed to load the module but it gave no error or warning about this failure. 

BTW, maybe it is related to the application signature required by iOS. I have to run "ldid –S app_name" to prevent "app_name" being killed by the system, so if autoload requires some operations of external applications that I didn't sign for, they may be killed by the system. Anyway, I need to have a better understanding of the "autoload" function before I can come up with a solution.

Do you have any suggestions about this issue? 

Thanks so much!

Sincerely yours,

Brandon