[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #51632] MS Windows portable (i.e. zip) version cannot find pre-installed packages, needs pkg rebuild, not mentioned at first run

[Tasos Papastylianou]

Follow-up Comment #28, bug #51632 (project octave):

Doug makes an interesting point; the need for a pkg rebuild is less a 'at
first launch' issue, but more of a 'whenever you change computer by treating
the zip version as a portable octave' issue. Therefore it might make less
sense to rely on the presence or absence of an `octave_packages` file, and
more sense to simply check (via octaverc) whether `pkg list` is displaying
appropriate output at each launch, and attempt a pkg rebuild if it is not,
under the assumption that the paths have changed.

On the other hand, it would be reasonable to expect that a user that treats
the octave zip-version "portably" in this way, is likely aware of the need to
do a pkg rebuild, once they've done it once, and that this is a trivial thing
to do so ... therefore to me this is still a documentation-first issue. It's
an extremely simple issue to address, once you know what's going on. The
biggest obstacle is not knowing what's going on in the first place, and not
being aware of the relevant wiki post (as per the original stackoverflow post
that triggered this discussion). 

I feel the solution is more along the lines of having a simple line saying
"you may need to rebuild / upgrade the packages", or a link to the wiki, next
to the download link to the zipped version; this could also clarify what Mike
is saying at the point of download, e.g. "link to alternative zip version: use
this if you're looking for a standalone version that doesn't require admin
rights, or to use as a 'portable' distribution (but see point on wiki
regarding portability)". I think the fact that the download link in the main
website simply redirects to a dry webpage of ftp links instead, devoid of any
helpful instructions, is more relevant to the problem than an octaverc fix,
however nice a touch the latter would be.

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