[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#1108716: octave-biosig: Package octave-biosig can not be loaded in Octave

[Étienne Mollier]

Control: tag -1 moreinfo

Hi Alois,

I probably should leave that issue to someone fluent with octave
and probably won't be in position to put useful packaging work
to resolve the situation (help from someone having some
experience with octave would be welcome, thanks:), but let's see
if I can contribute something useful to the bug entry anyway…

Alois Schlögl, on 2025-07-03:
>    * What led up to the situation?
>     
>     I recently upgraded to trixie, and tried reinstalling octave-biosig with 
>         apt-get install octave-biosig 
>    does run and the package is installed, however
>    when starting Octave, the package is not shown and can not be loaded with 
>         pkg list 
>         pkg load biosig     

I'm under the impression that the dh-octave scripting is
supposed to capture and convert the scripting to something
compatible with octave's integrated package management system.
However the package is deployed in such manner that it end up
flat:

> 	apt-file list octave-biosig 
>      shows the files are installed in 		
> 	octave-biosig: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/octave/site/oct/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/biosig/mexSSAVE.mex
> 	...
> 	octave-biosig: /usr/share/octave/site/m/biosig/...
>         ... 
>    * What was the outcome of this action?
> 
>      and when adding these directories, octave-biosig is usable. 

The sentence is unclear to me, when adding which directories
where?

>      pkg list 
>         should list biosig
>      pkg load biosig 
> 	should provide the functions in each path, e.g. 

Indeed:

	octave:1> pkg list
	no packages installed.
	octave:2> pkg load biosig
	error: package biosig is not installed
	error: called from
	    load_packages at line 47 column 7
	    pkg at line 639 column 7

>      which sload 
>      which mexSLOAD 
>          should show the location of these functions. 	

On my end I have something different from what you describre:
the symbols are identified without loading the packages at all,
as if they are loaded immediately in the octave namespace:

	octave:1> which sload
	'sload' is a function from the file /usr/share/octave/site/m/biosig/t200_FileAccess/sload.m
	octave:2> which mexSLOAD
	'mexSLOAD' is a function from the file /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/octave/site/oct/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/biosig/mexSLOAD.mex

Does that match your observation?

My current impression is that the package might simply need a
nudge to get octave-biosig shipped as an octave package, but as
I mentioned first, I'm not litterate with octave and it's
packaging at the moment, so I probably won't fix anything any
time soon.  I'm just trying to triage the bug.

Have a nice day,  :)
-- 
  .''`.  Étienne Mollier <emollier at debian.org>
 : :' :  pgp: 8f91 b227 c7d6 f2b1 948c  8236 793c f67e 8f0d 11da
 `. `'   sent from /dev/pts/1, please excuse my verbosity
   `-
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