Re: Managing packages in the workbench
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg108683] Re: Managing packages in the workbench
- From: "David Park" <djmpark at comcast.net>
- Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 05:10:42 -0500 (EST)
It's a bit difficult to understand why you are choosing to implement your application in a non-standard manner and to put everything in non-standard places. There are certain advantages to putting an application in the standard place with the standard structure - chief among these being that it just works. Having to implement many special settings that seem to be fuzzily documented in Workbench is putting serious obstacles in your path while you are trying to learn the basic operations. In any case, if it is really necessary to use such a non-standard structure WRI should give you more direct help and not just leave it to everyone to guess. How many packages do you have in the application and how involved is the directory structure? Would it be that bad to flatten out the structure? It may be possible to keep the structure in Workbench. You can right-click on the project and choose Properties. Then choose Mathematica/Project Paths. Then use the Source tab and the Add button. You should be able to add all of the folders that contain package files. I haven't tried this and don't know how it works, or if it carries through to the deployed application, or even if "Source" refers to packages or other things. There may also be methods to tell Mathematica where to look for your application. But if this involves setting additional system path locations with Options Inspector, then any users of your application will also have to be instructed how to do this. And then actually getting them to do it will be a bit of a chore. Again, what is the advantage of moving the application away from $UserBaseDirectory/Applications. In that location Mathematica will automatically find it. It will appear on the Installed Add-Ons page, where a user can bring up the documentation and load the package. A Mathematica Search will automatically find the files and include them on the search results, even if the package is not loaded. There are all kinds of nice things, and I don't know how well they hold up once you move to special structures and locations. Why don't you want the documentation incorporated with the application at the standard place? Do you mean you want to move it out of the application? The paclet goes with the application. They will have the same name. Even if you have multiple packages in the application, their exported symbols are flattened out into one paclet. If there is a persuasive argument for a non-standard structure, which I haven't heard yet, then WRI should tell you how it can be implemented. Or they should tell you that it can't be implemented, which would save a lot of time. David Park djmpark at comcast.net http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/ From: H. Ke=DFler [mailto:kessler.hannes at googlemail.com] My primary problem is that I would like to create help pages of Mathematica packages stored in directories which are not at the top level of my private Mathematica Applications directory. The Workbench creates hyperlinked help pages for such packages which work inside the Workbench but not when exported to the corresponding subdirectory of the Mathematica Applications directory. I checked the example you provided on your homepage (http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk/ m_documentation/m_documentation.html). But it seems that this example also deals with help pages for a package in a directory which is on the top level of the Mathematica Applications directory. If I am wrong, please correct me. But I would really appreciate if you can provide more details how to deal with packages in in deeper subdirectories of the Mathematica Applications directory, no matter of using the Workbench or some other approach. Best regards, Hannes Kessler On 25 Mrz., 10:25, David Bailey <d... at removedbailey.co.uk> wrote: > Hannes Kessler wrote: > > However, I have all my packages (many) in a logical hierarchical > > directory structure in the private Applications folder. It works fine > > in Mathematica. Rearranging this package system to a plain directory > > structure requires a lot of package context editing and a lot of time. > > That's my problem. In addition, much of the order is lost. For this > > reason I was hoping that it is possible to add help files to the > > package system in its present order. > > Perhaps the most obvious question is, why do you want to use the > Workbench - there may be other ways to achieve what you want to do! > > I too have things set up to my taste, and I don't want to change the way > I work to suit the Workbench. > > David Baileyhttp://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk