* Santiago Vila <sanv...@unex.es> [2012-07-11 16:02]: > On Tue, 10 Jul 2012, Rafael Laboissiere wrote: > > > I suspect that your system has some file left over from another package > > that may be causing the problem. If this is true, then what you are > > reporting is a real bug that must be fixed, but it is perhaps not caused > > by the octave package. > > I can assure that there is a real bug here, because this happened on > twenty different computers at work, and everything I did was "normal", > i.e. apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, apt-get dist-upgrade, > dpkg --purge not-needed-package, etc. > > I will not change the severity again because I don't want to start a > bug severity war, but I still think this bug deserves a freeze exception > (i.e. it should be RC). > > After the analysis by Thomas Weber, do you still need a precise way to > reproduce this?
At any rate, the following is a reproducible bug: $ sudo rmdir /usr/share/octave/packages/ $ sudo octave --silent --no-history --no-init-file --no-window-system --eval "pkg ('rebuild');" error: could not find the file or path /usr/share/octave/packages error: called from: error: /usr/share/octave/3.6.2/m/pkg/pkg.m at line 1234, column 5 error: /usr/share/octave/3.6.2/m/pkg/pkg.m at line 418, column 16 error: /usr/share/octave/3.6.2/m/startup/octaverc at line 26, column 1 I think that this is an upstream problem and I agree with you that this bug deserves a freeze exception. Sébastien has already set the severity level to serious again. For fixing the bug, I propose the patch attached below, that changes the code in pkg.m. To the other members of the DOG: please, tell me what you think about the patch. I am also wondering what we should do now. Should we create a "wheezy" branch in our Git repository and make an RC-fixing release with version number, say, 3.6.2-2.wheezy.1? Rafael
Description: Create packages directory, if is does not exist This package avoids failing errors when pkg('rebuild') is called and the /usr/share/octave/packages does not exist. Note that a similar code exists already in pkg.m when treating the directory in archprefix. Author: Rafael Laboissiere <raf...@laboissiere.net> Bug-Debian: http://bugs.debian.org/681064 Forwarded: no Last-Update: 2012-07-11 --- octave-3.6.2.orig/scripts/pkg/pkg.m +++ octave-3.6.2/scripts/pkg/pkg.m @@ -415,7 +415,13 @@ function [local_packages, global_package global_packages = archprefix; elseif (length (files) >= 1 && nargout <= 2 && ischar (files{1})) prefix = files{1}; - prefix = absolute_pathname (prefix); + try + prefix = absolute_pathname (prefix); + catch + mkdir (prefix); + warning ("creating the directory %s\n", prefix); + prefix = absolute_pathname (prefix); + end_try_catch local_packages = prefix; user_prefix = true; if (length (files) >= 2 && ischar (files{2}))