Octave packages documentation missing

[matthuszagh]

Has anyone worked on using Nix for octave package management? I'd like to get this working, but if there's previous work I can piggyback on that would be great. Any thoughts on what a good solution to this might look like? For instance, something like emacsWithPackages or pythonPackages.

[FRidh]

I suggest to indeed take a similar approach

• create a store path per package
• use octave-home/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc similar to how Python uses sitecustomize.py to introduce an env var to add to the search path using addpath
• composition using a buildEnv function that utilizes that env var.

[doronbehar]

That's certainly a nice idea. The popular octave package symbols for example requires some python libraries and they aren't loaded if octave doesn't have the correct PYTHONPATH in it's environment.

[doronbehar]

I'm planning to work on this with the upcoming Octave 6 release, along with other improvements to the derivation.

[doronbehar]

I had hopes that the Octave 6 release will come before my semester will start, but it didn't, and now I'm more then busy. I'll note here though that there are a few related PRs I'd like to get in, for the sake of improving the derivation in general:

• sundials: assert that lapack and blas are compatible #98500
• suitesparse: 5.7.2 -> 5.8.1 #98485

Other then that, I experimented a bit with the idea of fetching all octave packages from octave forge and even fetching the dependencies of each, by scraping the website. The idea is documented here:

master...doronbehar:pkg/octave/pkgs

It's a rough sketch, and the idea is to write a script that will create a list of sources and their deps to generate (perhaps only initially) a list of Nix expressions - sources and their deps & descriptions, a bit like how the lua modules list is generated. If anyone here has more motivation * time you are welcome to work on this.

[doronbehar]

Octave 6.1.0 was released and it landed in Nixpkgs (noticed it after I wrote my previous comment) and #98485 was merged thanks to it's suitesparse's maintainer.

[KarlJoad]

I have started working on this issue as well.
I have started by addressing the first point mentioned in: #65398 (comment)

The commits can be found here: KarlJoad:octave-modules

I am still working on getting an octave-packages.nix going in /pkgs/top-level/ going.

[doronbehar]

I also made progress, though with a slightly different approach towards the definition of all packages. In anyway, I think we need #106586 in order make the packages get the right arguments if octave is overridden - with the extended passthru defined there - for safer usage of blas, lapack and libraries alike.

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[doronbehar]

Still an issue.

[KarlJoad]

Initial documentation has been merged. If something is lacking, please let me know.

[doronbehar]

Initial documentation has been merged. If something is lacking, please let me know.

This is great! Thanks a lot @KarlJoad for maintaining this!