Problem installing octave-forge packages

[John Swensen]

I recently installed the most recent CVS and now I can't get packages to 
install.  I get a segmentation fault every time.  I dug around for a 
while and identified where the segfault is occurring, but I don't have 
any idea why it is happening.  In the install() function inside of 
pkg.m, there is the following section of code.

## Add the packages to the package list
   try
       if (global_install)
           idx = complement(packages_to_uninstall, 
1:length(global_packages));
           global_packages = {global_packages{idx} descriptions{:}};
           save(global_list, "global_packages");
       else
       fdisp(1,'NON GLOBAL INSTALL'); fflush(1);
       keyboard
           idx = complement(packages_to_uninstall, 
1:length(local_packages));
           local_packages = {local_packages{idx} descriptions{:}};
           save(local_list, "local_packages");
       endif
   catch
       ## Something went wrong, delete tmpdirs
       fdisp(1,'SOMTHING WENT WRONG'); fflush(1);
       for i = 1:length(tmpdirs)
           rm_rf(tmpdirs{i});
       endfor
       for i = 1:length(descriptions)
           rm_rf(descriptions{i}.dir);
       endfor
       if (global_install)
           error("Couldn't append to %s: %s", global_list, 
lasterr()(8:end));
       else
           error("Couldn't append to %s: %s", local_list, 
lasterr()(8:end));
       endif
   end_try_catch

The segfault occurs on the following line (from above):
save(local_list, "local_packages");


I put a keyboard statement in and looked at what idx and local_packages 
will contain and everything looks fine, but it seems as if the save() 
function is having problems with this struct.  I then ran octave in gdb 
and got the following stack trace when the segfault occurs:
#0  0x656c6520 in ?? ()
#1  0x10b14e90 in std::basic_filebuf<char, std::char_traits<char> 
>::_M_terminate_output (this=0x121d8230) at 
/sw/src/fink.build/gcc42-4.1.9999-20070221/darwin_objdir/i686-apple-darwin8/libstdc++-v3/include/bits/fstream.tcc:765
#2  0x010a1df4 in save_vars (address@hidden, address@hidden, 
fmt=LS_ASCII, save_as_floats=-1073752988) at load-save.cc:1119
#3  0x010a2a4c in save_vars (address@hidden, argv_idx=-1073752800, 
argc=3, address@hidden, fmt=LS_ASCII, save_as_floats=0, 
write_header_info=1) at load-save.cc:1318
(The stack trace was big, so I only listed the most recent few)

At this point, I don't know enough about how save_vars works to debug 
any further.

OS: OSX (using fink)
Octave: 2.9.10+ (4/5/2007 AM CVS)

John Swensen