error: support for URL transfers was disabled when Octave was built

After installing octave from edge/testing, running pkg install -forge image produces error: support for URL transfers was disabled when Octave was built. Example in a docker container (alpine:3.6):

docker run --rm alpine:latest sh -c "echo 'http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing' >> /etc/apk/repositories \ && sed -i -e 's/v[0-9]\.[0-9]/edge/g' /etc/apk/repositories \ && apk add -U --no-cache curl octave \ && echo \"pkg install -forge image\" > pkg.inst \ && octave-cli pkg.inst \ && rm -f pkg.inst"

(from redmine: issue id 7753, created on 2017-08-25)