[Pkg-octave-devel] How to use libhdf5-serial-dev and -mpi/-lam friends correctly?

[Thomas Weber <tweber@debian.org>]

Hi, 

[Please CC me, I'm not subscribed].

I'm currently faced with #598227, 
http://bugs.debian.org/598227
which concerns the way Octave uses hdf5 and its header files (or rather,
how hdf5 includes mpi.h). Please read the bug report for information,
it's presented there far better than I could formulate it.

Background information:
The preferred way to build binary 'extensions' or 'plugins' for Octave
is using the mkoctfile shell script. I'm not aware of any software in
Debian that does not use mkoctfile for building such extension.

Now, I could fix the above bug by hacking mkoctfile, but somehow this
looks like the wrong solution to me. If I include hdf.h, do I really
have to care about mpi which may or may not be used?

So, are there better solutions than adding /usr/include/mpi/ to
mkoctfile's include flags?

Thanks
	Thomas