Re: Issues with build Fedora RPMs of octave packages

[David Bateman]

Orion Poplawski wrote:
> David Bateman wrote:
>> The binary architecture dependent files are under a separate directory in
>>
>>
>> arch = strcat (octave_config_info("canonical_host_type"), ...
>>                  "-", octave_config_info("api_version"));
>>
>> /usr/share/octave/packages/%name-%version/%arch
>>
>> Where should they be to meet the FHS? The only constraint I see on their
>> placement is that it would be better to have each packages architecture
>> dependent files in a separate directory. This for the PKG_ADD command
>> issue below.
>>
> 
> According to the FHS:
> 
> /usr/share : Architecture-independent data
> 
> Currently the Fedora octave packages put the .oct files into
> LOCALAPIOCTFILEDIR, for example:
> 
> /usr/libexec/octave/2.9.14/oct/i386-redhat-linux-gnu
> 
> Possibly this should get changed to
> 
> /usr/lib[64]/octave/%version/oct
> 
> depending on how you feel about libexec.  libexec is generally for
> programs and scripts that are only executed by other programs, not
> libraries.

Well are oct-files libraries? From a certain way of looking at it yes,
but you can't be guaranteed to be able to link to them.. Looking at the
issue from within Octave it would be easies to make pkg (when run as
root), install the packages files to

LOCALAPIFILEDIR/<package>

Another reason that there needs to be separate directories is that the
package manager might have one package loaded and others not and having
or the files in one path makes it harder (if not impossible) to allow
only a portion of the oct-files to be used.

> Why not get the path inserted at install time?  That's essentially the
> hack I've done to my octave-forge package, but it would be better if
> this could get supported automatically.
> 
> Source PKG_ADD would look something like:
> 
> autoload("funct","@OCTPATH@/myfuncts.oct");
> 
> and @OCTPATH@ gets substituted at install time.


What does install time mean in this context? If a user runs "pkg install
..." should it file in the path. Yes. If you are fedora packager run it,
then no.. This is problematic... I think the best option is to make
autoload check in the same directory as the function or script
containing the autoload command first and then check the user path.
Though this is a less important change than the LOCALAPIFILEDIR change..

I'm a bit stretched for time to make such changes at this time and so
maybe someone will do it first :-)

D.