[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#367165: octave2.1: please put runtime libraries in /usr/lib, not /usr/lib/octave-VERSION

[Zack Weinberg]

Package: octave2.1
Version: 1:2.1.73-8
Severity: wishlist

octave puts three shared libraries in /usr/lib/octave-VERSION rather than
give them proper sonames.

$ ldd /usr/bin/octave-2.1.73
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
        liboctinterp.so => /usr/lib/octave-2.1.73/liboctinterp.so (0x411f2000)
        liboctave.so => /usr/lib/octave-2.1.73/liboctave.so (0x41923000)
        libcruft.so => /usr/lib/octave-2.1.73/libcruft.so (0x41000000)

The binary has an RPATH of /usr/lib/octave-2.1.73, so for most purposes
this causes no problems (except, of course, the problems associated with
having an RPATH at all), but it does cause prelink to barf.  It's also
inconsistent with the way things are done in the rest of the system.
It would be nice if these libraries moved to /usr/lib and grew proper
sonames -- there's nothing wrong with using 'liboctave.so.2.1.73' if
there is no ABI guarantee at all.

[If the only binary that is supposed to link these libraries is the
octave binary itself, though, it might make even more sense to link
them statically - I don't normally make this recommendation, but this
is a math toolkit and squeezing performance out matters.]

Will try to come up with a patch if I can find the time, but please
don't hold your breath, I have lots of other things on my plate.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16-1-686-smp
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages octave2.1 depends on:
ii  atlas3-base [liblapack.s 3.6.0-20        Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra
ii  fftw3                    3.0.1-14        library for computing Fast Fourier
ii  lapack3 [liblapack.so.3] 3.0.20000531a-6 library of linear algebra routines
ii  libc6                    2.3.6-7         GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libgcc1                  1:4.1.0-4       GCC support library
ii  libgfortran0             4.0.3-3         Runtime library for GNU Fortran ap
ii  libhdf5-serial-1.6.5-0 [ 1.6.5-2         Hierarchical Data Format 5 (HDF5) 
ii  libncurses5              5.5-2           Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libreadline5             5.1-7           GNU readline and history libraries
ii  libstdc++6               4.1.0-4         The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  texinfo                  4.8.dfsg.1-1    Documentation system for on-line i
ii  zlib1g                   1:1.2.3-11      compression library - runtime

octave2.1 recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information