I'm currently working with octave upstream to get their new package management system in line with Fedora so that we can easily build RPMs with it. I'd like to get a Fedora package standard configured and approved at the same time. I've put a draft on the wiki at:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Octave
Some further information:
- Currently octave uses the /usr/libexec tree to install the .oct files. These are really shared libraries. It does use an arch/api versioned directory, e.g.:
/usr/libexec/octave/packages/java-1.2.1/i386-redhat-linux-gnu-api-v26/
Some other package files (PKG_ADD/PKG_DEL) get added there too.
- Currently the entire octave forge collection is part of the octave-forge package. I will releasing this for F8, with the understanding that this will be replaced by individual packages later. The octave forge package will have provides like:
Provides: octave-gsl = 1.0.1
to try to provide a better upgrade path. We may want to keep the octave-forge as a meta package that pulls in the others. Let me know if this doesn't seem correct.
- DISTPKG (%{octave_distpkg}) is a flag that this is being built by a package manager. The contents get inserted into an informational message, but otherwise does not mean much.