Re: packaging system

[Stefan van der Walt]

On Sun, Jun 19, 2005 at 08:06:24PM +0200, Søren Hauberg wrote:
> Stefan van der Walt wrote:
> >Why?  There are a set set of toolboxes.  Your package must just know
> >to which toolbox it contributes?  The problem that we were discussing
> >earlier, is what happens when your package contributes to more than
> >one toolbox.
> If I write a package and someone else desides to create another package 
> that uses my packagee, how would I know?

I think we are missing each other here.  I don't see why that should matter?

> I guess we can do that - I just don't see why. All the functions in a 
> package can be found in a seperate directory, so we have the information 
> the INDEX file would contain available. Or, are you suggesting that the 
> INDEX file also would include the functions from the dependend packages?

In the above paragraph you are making the assumption that any package
contains functions from only one toolbox, and vice versa (i.e. any
toolbox is made up of only one package).

If this is a design constraint that we specify beforehand, I think it
should be well motivated.  We must also keep in mind that packages
will not only be used by the official distributions -- people might
use it to create custom Octave distributions etc.

As I mentioned to John, it is not unreasonable to expect packages to
contain functions that complement an already existing toolbox.  Thus,
the toolbox and the package should be different entities.

Regards
Stefan