[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#741097: octave: nox package of Octave

[Mike Miller]

On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 12:13:40 -0800, Mike Miller wrote:
> If this bug is still of interest, I think a useful first step would be
> for someone to adapt the octave source package and add the appropriate
> --without-X options. Once there are proof of concept binary packages
> built without any graphical dependencies, then a useful disk usage
> comparison can be done.

Here is an example of what I suggest interested parties can do quite
easily. Modify the source package as in the attached example patch. This
is not an example of a full solution, just a quick and dirty hack to
build octave with no graphical dependencies. Note that this will also be
a slightly crippled octave without any imread or imwrite capability.

With the resulting packages, I can compare the storage requirements in a
clean minbase installation:

    # apt install --no-install-recommends octave
    …
    0 upgraded, 181 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
    Need to get 88.3 MB of archives.
    After this operation, 450 MB of additional disk space will be used.

versus

    # apt install --no-install-recommends ./octave_4.2.1-6_amd64.deb \
                                          ./liboctave4_4.2.1-6_amd64.deb \
                                          ./octave-common_4.2.1-6_all.deb
    …
    0 upgraded, 69 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
    Need to get 29.9 MB/38.9 MB of archives.
    After this operation, 167 MB of additional disk space will be used.

So I have saved about 280 MB in storage by dropping all graphical
dependencies. That's about 5 MB in the octave binaries themselves and
the rest in the dropped dependencies. Octave will not have a GUI, will
not be able to plot anything, and will not be able to read or write
image file formats.

Is 0.25-0.3 GB on the order of the savings you are looking for? Is it
worth not being able to work with image files or plot anything, even
headless plotting?

-- 
mike
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