Error when installing package - symbolic

Question

For expanding, collecting, factorization and simplification of equations, I'm trying to install the package: symbolic¹, in Octave 4.2.1 (running on Windows 10).

When I execute pkg install symbolic-2.6.0.tar.gz from the command line I get:

dirlist(3): out of bound 2
error: called from
install at line 102 column 19
pkg at line 394 column 9

What is this error? How to install the package?

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^{1. Which is manually downloaded and located in the current working directory: bottom right corner of the first picture.}

^{2.I have the required dependencies: Python and Sympy installed:}

^{3. I've read this post.}

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Update: Following @Alex338207 suggestions

Just extracted it with 7-Zip (twice: symbolic-2.6.0.tar.gz -> symbolic-2.6.0.tar -> symbolic-2.6.0).

Then ran: pkg install symbolic-2.6.0 and got the following error:

unpack: FILETYPE must be "gunzip" for a directory
error: called from
unpack at line 122 column 7
untar at line 47 column 5
install at line 81 column 9
pkg at line 394 column 9

---

Update 2: Following @carandraug suggestions. After modifying the function install (dirlist right after [dirlist, err, msg] = readdir (tmpdir); ), I get:

filelist =
{
  [1,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/
  [2,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/CONTRIBUTORS
  [3,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/COPYING
  [4,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/DESCRIPTION
  [5,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/INDEX
  [6,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/Makefile
  [7,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/NEWS
  [8,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/README.md
  [9,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/bin/
  [10,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/bin/winwrapy.bat
  [11,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/inst/
  [12,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/inst/@double/
  ....
  [396,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/misc/
  [397,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/misc/extract_tests_for_matlab.m
  [398,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/misc/my_print_usage.m
  [399,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/misc/octassert.m
  [400,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/misc/octsympy_tests_matlab.m
  [401,1] = symbolic-2.6.0/octave-symbolic.metainfo.xml
}

and:

dirlist =
{
  [1,1] = .
  [2,1] = ..
}

Answer 1

It seems that the error comes from the installation of the package (before any code from the package is actually run).

Octave seems to have trouble reading the file in the compressed directory. Can you check the size of the file symbolic-2.6.0.tar.gz ? It should have 239429 bytes. Maybe you should re-download the file. You can also verify its MD5 sum (c24c07222c7bb6770cf2a6dbee653bff) using the tool described here https://superuser.com/a/245776/338207. Check also that your system has enough disk space.

If the file has the right size and the error persists, you can also decompress the file symbolic-2.6.0.tar.gz (using for example 7-zip). It should contain a single folder also called symbolic-2.6.0. Avoid to decompress the files as symbolic-2.6.0\symbolic-2.6.0\....

In octave, you can install the package from the uncompressed folder with these commands:

 cd('c:\go\to\the\directory')

Where c:\go\to\the\directory is the directory containing symbolic-2.6.0. Or use the "current directory" drop-drown menu from the GUI. Then:

 ls('symbolic-2.6.0')

Verify that you see inst, bin and Makefile among others. Finally:

 pkg install symbolic-2.6.0

To load the package use:

pkg load symbolic

If you want to avoid to load the package, you can also install it with:

 pkg install -auto symbolic-2.6.0

Answer 2

The pkg function expects a tar.gz file, that is, an archive of a directory tree (a .tar file) which is then gunzipped (compressed, the '.gz'). So you shouldn't have tried to uncompress it yourself.

The error you get comes from pkg/private/install.m#102 which is right after uncompressing the package file.

    ## The two first entries of dirlist are "." and "..".
    if (exist (tgz, "file"))
      packdir = fullfile (tmpdir, dirlist{3});
    else

The inside of the package should have a single directory, with the package contents, and nothing else. At this point, dirlist should be:

{".", "..", the_only_directory_inside_tgz}

However, your error says that dirlist{3} is out of bounds, so there is no directory after uncompressing the package. You can see a bit earlier that dirlist comes from:

    untar (tgz, tmpdir);

    ## Get the name of the directories produced by tar.
    [dirlist, err, msg] = readdir (tmpdir);
    if (err)
      error ("couldn't read directory produced by tar: %s", msg);
    endif

    if (length (dirlist) > 3)
      error ("bundles of packages are not allowed");
    endif

So, it's not clear at this point what the issue is. We can deduce that readdir did not fail, so dirlist will at least have . and ... This suggests me that untar found nothing during the uncompressing.

Try replacing that line with:

filelist = untar (tgz, tmpdir) # no ; at the end

To see what was unpacked. Also, a few lines below, print out the values of dirlist should give you hints about what is going on.

EDIT: see answer comments for a kind of solution. Basically, it seems that the untar function was failing to uncompressing the package to the specified directory (C:\...Temp\oct-...) and was instead uncompressing them to C:\.