Re: Installing Multiple Versions of Octave

[Sergei Steshenko]

----- Original Message -----
> From: CdeMills <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Cc: 
> Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2013 4:37 PM
> Subject: Re: Installing Multiple Versions of Octave
> 
> Victor Arambula wrote
>>  Hello,
>> 
>>  Can I have two versions of Octave installed at the same time
>>  (e.g., 3.6.4 and 3.6.1)?  Or do I have to uninstall one version before
>>  installing another?
>> 
>>  I installed version 3.6.4, and then installed GUI Octave, but found that
>>  GUI Octave requires version 3.6.1.  Now I can't uninstall GUI Octave. 
>  My
>>  guess is that I first need to install version 3.6.1 before I can uninstall
>>  GUI Octave.  I'd rather be able to install 3.6.1, then uninstall GUI
>>  Octave and version 3.6.1, without uninstalling version 3.6.4 of Octave.
> 
> Depends on how familiar you are with compiling and installing yourself a
> program.
> 
> If you are using some  package manager, the main binary will be installed
> into some standard path; like f.i. /usr/bin
> 
> You MAY compile and install yourself another version by specifiying, during
> the configure step, to place it elsewhere:
> 1) get the sources from mercurial
> 2) ./bootstrap
> 3) ./configure --prefix=/usr/local 
> 
> another option for step 3) is ./configure --prefix=${HOME}/usr
> 
> then you launch "standard" octave as 'octave', provided your 
> PATH
> environment variable contains '/usr/bin'; and experimental octave as
> /usr/local/bin/octave or ${HOME}/usr/bin/octave depending on the way you
> configured it during step 3.
> 
> But compiling octave is not easy if you are not familiar with compiler
> tools, libraries management and so on. Moreover, it will be difficult to
> help you about some version you compiled yourself if you are using some
> non-standard setup.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Pascal
> 
>

Do not forget that default 'pkg.m' does _not_ create directory per Octave 
version under user home directory.

I was burned by this more than once (I routinely build and install different 
versions of Octave into separate directories). As I wrote much earlier, this 
was one of the reasons for hacking 'pkg.m'.

Global install of packages (i.e. into Octave proper tree) should be OK.

Overall, LD_LIBRARY_PATH might need to be adjusted per Octave version.


Regards,
  Sergei.