User Guide¶

This is an user guide with some instructions to the end-user.

Installing g-Octave¶

The ebuilds for g-Octave are available on the Portage tree. You can install the package, using:

# emerge -av app-portage/g-octave

We have 2 ebuilds, one for with latest stable release (for ~x86 and ~amd64) and one live ebuild, that installs g-Octave from the Git repository (without keywords). If you want to use the live ebuild, you need to unmask it adding the line below to your /etc/portage/package.keywords:

app-portage/g-octave **

The live ebuild is only recommended for who want to help testing new features, or for developers.

Stable users (with x86 or amd64) that wants to test the latest release will need to unmask the ebuild too, adding this to /etc/portage/package.keywords (e.g. for x86):

app-portage/g-octave ~x86

The source code of g-Octave can be found in this Git repository:

https://github.com/rafaelmartins/g-octave/downloads

You can clone the Git repository using this command (with Git installed, of course):

$ git clone git://github.com/rafaelmartins/g-octave.git

The release tarballs can be found here:

https://github.com/rafaelmartins/g-octave/downloads

USE flags¶

doc: Install this documentation. Depends on dev-python/sphinx.

Configuring g-Octave¶

Using the file `/etc/g-octave.cfg`¶

If you installed g-Octave correctly, you should find a configuration file at /etc/g-octave.cfg.

The main options are package_manager, db and overlay, that defines the package manager used by g-octave and the directory paths for the package database and the generated overlay, respectively.

Other options are available. Please read the comments in the configuration file.

Using environment variables¶

All the options from the configuration file can be overrided with environment variables. The environment variable name starts with GOCTAVE_ and ends with the option name in uppercase. for example, GOCTAVE_OVERLAY will override the option overlay from the config file.

Usage example:

# GOCTAVE_OVERLAY=/tmp/overlay g-octave -av packagename

Enabling the logging feature¶

If you want to write some relevant stuff to a log file you can enable the logging feature, configuring the option log_level on the configuration.

The available options are: debug, info, warning, error, critical.

You can change the location of the log file, using the option log_file. The default is: /var/log/g-octave.log

Make sure that the user running g-octave have write permissions to log_file.

Syncronizing the package database¶

Currently g-Octave depends on an external package database, in order to create the ebuilds for the packages. If you installed the live version of g-Octave (=g-octave-9999) you’ll need to fetch this database in the first time that you run g-Octave (and whenever you want to updates):

# g-octave --sync

Configuring your package manager¶

g-octave can use all the 3 package managers available on Gentoo Linux: Portage, Paludis and Pkgcore.

You just need to setup the option package_manager with the lowercase name of the package manager: portage, paludis, pkgcore.

If you’re using Paludis or Pkgcore, you’ll need to configure the overlay in your package manager configuration files. Please check the documentation of your package manager:

Paludis: http://paludis.pioto.org/
Pkgcore: http://www.pkgcore.org/

Portage works out of the box.

Installing packages¶

From the upstream source tarballs¶

You can list all the available packages using this command:

# g-octave --list

or

# g-octave -l

To install a package, use:

# g-octave packagename

or

# g-octave packagename-version

For example:

# g-octave control-1.0.11

g-octave command-line tool supports some options for the installation of packages:

-a or --ask: Ask before install the package
-p or --pretend: Only pretend the installation of the package
-1 or --oneshot: Do not add the packages to the world file for later updating.

You can get some information about the package using this command:

# g-octave --info packagename

or

# g-octave -i packagename

From the octave-forge Mercurial repository¶

If you want to test some new feature or to always use the newest version of the packages, you’ll like to install the packages directly from the Mercurial repository.

To install a package from Mercurial, you’ll need to configure g-Octave, changing the value of the variable use_scm on the file /etc/g-octave.cfg to true. After that, type:

# g-octave packagename

If you only want to install a single package, you can use the command-line option --scm.

If you enabled the installation from Mercurial on the configuration file and wants to install a stable version, you can use the command-line option --no-scm.

Updating packages¶

You can update a package using this command:

# g-octave --update packagename

or

# g-octave -u packagename

If you want to update all the installed packages, run this without arguments:

# g-octave --update

or

# g-octave -u

The options --ask and --verbose are also supported.

Searching packages¶

You can do searches on the package names if you use the option -s or --search. Regular expressions are allowed.

# g-octave --search anything

or

# g-octave -s ^con

Uninstalling packages¶

You can uninstall packages using this command:

# g-octave --unmerge packagename

or

# g-octave -C packagename-version