Re: Creating and installing one's own packages?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg82760] Re: Creating and installing one's own packages?
- From: Szabolcs Horvát <szhorvat at gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 03:39:04 -0500 (EST)
- References: <fg4d7v$68l$1@smc.vnet.net>
AES wrote:
> I have a general understanding of what a 'package' is.
A package is just a plain text file, with the extension .m, containing
some Mathematica expressions. The expressions are evaluated when you
read in the package.
In[1]:= << "abc.m"
will read in and evaluate the contents of the file abc.m, if abc.m is in
the current directory, Directory[]. (But see the
MathematicaFileOrganization tutorial I mention below!)
> I understand (I
> think) that one can prepare a notebook, and then save (or install?) that
> notebook as a package.
A notebook cannot be used as a package, but (as you note below), it is
possible to maintain .m files based on notebooks.
> And somewhere in the fragmented documentation
> on packages I also found the sentence:
>
> "There are also capabilities that allow packages set up to
> correspond to notebooks to be maintained automatically."
>
> N ow, the tutorial "Setting Up Mathematica Packages" gives me a model
> or outline or template for a package, which I can use as a guide to
> create ("set up?") my own package -- as a notebook, anyway.
>
> But I'll be g-ddamned if I can find anywhere, in that tutorial or
> anywhere else in the Mathematica 6 documentation, explicit instructions
> on:
>
> * How to then convert that notebook into a package, or
> where to save it as such after conversion.
If you have some initialization cells (Cell -> Cell properties) in the
notebook, Mathematica will ask you before saving whether you would like
it to automatically maintain a package (.m) file, with the same content
as the initialization cells. If you enable this, then the .m file will
be automatically updated whenever you save the notebook.
> * Where to save the parent notebook itself (or a copy of it),
> as an unconverted notebook.
The .m file will be in the same directory as the .nb file.
You may want to read these:
tutorial/SettingUpMathematicaPackages
tutorial/MathematicaFileOrganization
tutorial/FilesForPackages
> * How to later modify or edit or update the package itself,
> as I'm likely to want to do: Update the package itself?
> (And if so, how to get at it?) Update the parent notebook
> and then convert -- and Install? -- again?
>
> [Note that the word "Install" does not seem to appear anywhere in the
> "Setting Up Mathematica Packages" tutorial.]
>
--
Szabolcs