Re: Refer flatpak install of octave for linux on octave or octave wiki on the web

[Mike Miller]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2018 at 23:15:29 +0100, John Frain wrote:
> I had problems installing forge packages such as nan and gsl in the flatpak
> version (messages received when I tried to install gsl is at the end of
> this email). I presume that the flatpak version can not access some
> required files.
[…]
> configure: error: gslcblas library not found

That's right. Flatpak applications are containers, isolated from the
host filesystem by design. This means the only libraries that the
flatpak version of Octave can see are those installed by the Flatpak
runtime itself. The GSL library is not one of those.

At some point in the future, we (the Octave flatpak maintainers) may
choose to include some extra libraries that are used by popular Octave
Forge packages.

Or the Octave gsl package maintainer may look at an option for bundling
the GSL library with the Octave Forge package (similar to how the Octave
control package bundles the SLICOT library).

> I reinstalled the Octave 4.2.2 version and successfully reinstalled the
> required packages there.  They now appear to be available to the flatpak
> version. At least the statistics package is working.  I have not tried the
> gsl library. It is possible that the problems that caused it to fail may
> cause it when some gsl functions are called.  At least I can use some
> Octave forge packages with the flatpak version and use the lder version
> when this fails.  Does any one have any advice.

Right, this will probably not work well in general. If a package is
entirely m-file functions (no compiled code), then it should work.

> I have als installed flatpak emacs (version 26.1).  Is there an easy way to
> use octave-mode on this flatpak version of emacs.  It can read the same
> .emacs file as the standard version 25.3.2 version of emacs which
> dimplements octave -mode as expected.  I have looked for a solution on the
> web and have failed to find one. Perhaps I have looked in the wrong placesll

As far as I know, it is not possible to have a flatpak Application 1
interact directly with a flatpak Application 2. They are isolated from
the host operating system by design, and also from each other. So it
seems to me that it is not possible to have flatpak Emacs run flatpak
Octave as a child process with a pipe (how I assume octave-mode works).

If there is a way to have them communicate over another mechanism, like
dbus or a unix socket, then that may work.

Running flatpak Octave from the native host Emacs should be possible.

Cheers,

-- 
mike

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