Re: educate after "pkg install"

[Carnë Draug]

On 13 March 2015 at 09:43, Colin Macdonald <address@hidden> wrote:
> A private email from a new person using my package:
>> I managed to ...
>> --- 8< ---
>> However, it seems that this package was somehow not installed ?
>>
>> octave:6> pkg install -forge symbolic
>> For information about changes from previous versions of the symbolic 
>> package, run 'news symbolic'.
>> octave:7> help sym
>> error: help: 'sym' not found
>
> 1.  We might be better saying:
>
>    Run 'pkg load symbolic' to use this package.  Run 'news symbolic' for
> recent changes.
>
> (At least if the package and user do not specify autoload.)

We already have something like this in place for the most common packages.
There is a hardcoded list of functions for them and if they are not found,
it prints a message reminding to load the package.  If the package is already
loaded, then it prints the same message as in core to help with developmment:

    octave> watershed (bw)
    warning: the 'watershed' function belongs to the image package
from Octave Forge
    which you have installed but not loaded.  To load the package, run 'pkg
    load image' from the Octave prompt.

    octave> pkg load image
    octave> watershed (bw)
    warning: the 'watershed' function belongs to the image package
from Octave Forge
    but has not yet been implemented.

    Please read <http://www.octave.org/missing.html> to learn how you can
    contribute missing functionality.

The problem was that the symbolic package was not being listed there.  It
should be fixed now [1]:

    octave> help sym
    error: help: the 'sym' function belongs to the symbolic package
from Octave Forge
    which you have installed but not loaded.  To load the package, run 'pkg
    load symbolic' from the Octave prompt.

Carnë

[1] http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/fc6c87e254bf