Re: Requirements for releasing the STK toolbox as an Octave forge package ?

[Julien Bect]

On 24/02/2014 16:06, Carnë Draug wrote:
> On 24 February 2014 14:48, Julien Bect <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > > Is there any way I can preview the HTML documentation formatted as it
> > > > will be formatted on the Octave Forge website ?
> > > You will need to download the CSS style file [1]. Maybe some of the
> > > javascript files will be needed. Carnė [1]
> > > http://octave.sourceforge.net/octave-forge.css
> > Ok. But how do I generate the HTML output ? Should I use the
> > generate_package_html () function from the "generate_html" package ?
> >
> > I have tried this, after installing STK as an octave package :
> >
> >      pkg load generate_html
> >      generate_package_html ("stk", "stk_html", "octave-forge")
> >
> > but it doesn't work for me : only the M-files located at the root at the
> > package seem to be found. How do I produce documentation for a package that
> > has several subdirectories ?
> That should work if you have the stk package installed. I created the
> stk package as you mentioned to try to duplicate this but I couldn't
> even load the package. When I did it (pkg load stk), it prints the GPL
> notice a *lot* of times, before giving the following error repeated
> too many times:
>
> error:   clear at line 30, column 5
> error:   /home/carandraug/octave/stk-2.2.0/stk_init.m at line 72, column 67
> error:   /home/carandraug/octave/stk-2.2.0/PKG_ADD at line 4, column 1

Installing and loading the package works fine for me (both on the 3.6.4 
release that comes with my Ubuntu 13.04, and on my fresh build of Octave 
3.8.1-rc3). Which release of Octave are you using ?

Could you please try to step through stk_init.m to understand why it is 
called several times ?


> Also, why do you have the functions split into multiple directories?
> If you are already creating the package with a script, there's no need
> for organization, you might as well place all the m files into a
> single directory. This will also make it simpler for you, and will be
> less prone to bugs when adding and removing to the search path.

As a user, I prefer when I can browse the source tree and understand 
from its structure how the toolbox/package/module/... is organized. So, 
yes, I know that I could put everything into a single directory, but I 
would really prefer to keep the original layout if possible (I see that 
the LTFAT package has subdirectories, for instance, so it shouldn't be a 
problem).

Plus, the packaging script would be more delicate to write, since not 
everything must be flattened out (for instance, we have private 
subdirectories, class subdirectories, and even class subdirectories that 
contain private subdirectories that contain MEX-files...).

Of course, if it turns out that this is the only to make it work, I will 
do that.

> By the way, the package is shadowing the following core functions:
> linsolve, qunatile, and corr. Why is it doing this?

It's not shadowing anything : the error message that you quote is 
inaccurate...

The functions that you mention are provided for compatibility with older 
versions of Octave (for instance, 3.2.4 has neither corr nor linsolve) 
and to avoid a dependency on the Statistics toolbox for Matlab users. 
They are only added to the path if it is detected at runtime that they 
are missing (see misc/mole/PKG_ADD.m).

I will remove them during the installation if it is detected that they 
are not needed...