[Pkg-octave-devel] Dynare status

[Sébastien Villemot]

Le lundi 20 avril 2009 à 21:52 +0200, Thomas Weber a écrit :
> There are several options: we could add /usr/share/dynare/matlab to
> Octave's path in /etc/octave3.0.conf.
> I don't know what happens if the path doesn't exist, though.
> 
> We could change our way of adding paths similar to what Apache is doing
> in Debian: create a directory under /etc, where every Octave related
> package can drop a small file with just the necessary stuff for
> initialization and /etc/octave3.0.conf just sources these files.

These two options are indeed interesting. The only problem is that, for
the time being, a few functions of Dynare have name clashes with
Octave's. This will be fixed in the next major upstream release, and it
would also be possible to introduce a patch fixing this meanwhile.

> > So if we keep this way of using Dynare, the package can be released now 
> > (provided that I update README.Debian). For the sake of simplicity, and 
> > since this would be consistent with our Dynare package for Windows, I 
> > would actually prefer that solution.
> >
> > Otherwise we could make a symlink in $(MDIR), pointing to dynare.m. This 
> > is the easiest way of avoiding manual path manipulations. And I prefer a 
> > symlink, because I don't wan't to move dynare.m out of  
> > /usr/share/dynare/matlab (Matlab users need it).
> 
> I don't like the first option. The problem of making dynare.m available to
> end-users is certainly within our possibilites as packagers, so we
> shouldn't force users to use addpath. 
> 
> I understand your motivation as upstream developer to keep installation
> instructions consistent, but I don't want to settle for the least common
> denominator as distribution packager.

I perfectly understand your point of view, mine is indeed biased by my
position as upstream dev. So let's find a user-friendly solution.

> I'm surprised about the symlink option: is a sysmlink to dynare.m really
> sufficient? No other paths needed?

This indeed works provided that we add a
"addpath /usr/share/dynare/matlab" line at the top of dynare.m :)

Note that Dynare does other path manipulations, in dynare_config.m, for
adding some other directories (subdirs with M-files, MEX files...).

Another interesting feature would be to have something like
"mark_as_command dynare" automatically executed at runtime. It is indeed
more convenient for users to type "dynare filename.mod" rather than
"dynare('filename.mod')". I haven't find any other way than adding this
command to .octaverc. Any suggestion?

Best,

-- 
Sébastien Villemot