Re: [Plplot-devel] Recent octave configuration changes

[Rafael L. <lab...@ps...>]

* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-02-16 15:08]:

> However, I assure you everything worked fine for 5.2.0 so your statement:
> "Without this change, or something functionally equivalent, the Octave
> bindings are unusable." indicates to me you haven't looked clearly at the
> previous working functionality in 5.2.0.

I checked this with a "make install" from the official 5.2.0 tarball with
Octave enabled.  I am sorry to tell you, but the Octave installation is
broken, as I suspected.  In file octave_plplot_path.m the string
PLPLOT_OCTAVE_PATH does not get substituted as it was in the pre-AT era.

The reason for this misbehavior is simple, as I already explained in the cvs
commit log: the substitution of PLPLOT_OCTAVE_PATH was done in
cf/pkg_octave.in and this code is lost now, since it was part of a Makefile.

Here is the error message in Octave:

    $ octave
    octave> use_plplot
    error: PLPLOT_OCTAVE_DIR: No such file or directory
    error: called from ùse_plplot'in file `/usr/share/octave/site/m/PLplot/use_plplot.m'

Of course, everything will work fine if the correct path is set
independently by the user, but this is not documented.  Joao's documentation
tells the user to use the use_plplot script, which is broken in 5.2.0.  I
repeat: the Octave bindings _are_ broken in the 5.2.0 tarball.

I will work together with Joao to improve the Octave
configuration/installation schemes.

-- 
Rafael