Re: Merging Octave and Octave-Forge?

[Levente Torok]

Hi all,

I would like to call attention some deficiencies in using octave-forge along 
with octave.

Perheps because Function cov() works differently on matlab and on octave, 
Alois Schloegl and Matthew W. Roberts replaced the octave version with its own 
version in 
the extra/nan-1.0.6 package.
In the installation README file, the authors suggests us to completely 
overwrite 
the original /m/statistics/base/*.m,*.oct files.
This can be seen as an obstructive and collabortive act on behalf of 
octave-forgers.

Furthermore I found that octave-forge packages define a lot of lvariables 
during the startup.
Well, I would not like to have all those variables stored in my environment and 
saved and restored
each time (by save and load functions).

I guess these kind of things will cause some further headaches.

Lev

On Tuesday 26 August 2008, Søren Hauberg wrote:
> tir, 26 08 2008 kl. 11:41 -0400, skrev John W. Eaton:
> > On 25-Aug-2008, address@hidden wrote:
> > 
> > |    As I've recently announced a new release of Octave-Forge has just  
> > | been made. Whenever I make these releases the same thought pops up in  
> > | my head: "why does Octave-Forge even exist?".
> > 
> > I think it exists because several people thought I was too slow to
> > accept contributed code in the core Octave distribution.  Also, it is
> > nice to have a place where people can work collaboratively on
> > contributed code.  Much of that code is domain specific and not really
> > suitable for the core Octave distribution in any case.
> 
> I'm not advocating that the packages should be distributed as part of
> the code Octave distribution. I just think it would be a lot more nice
> if there was only one entry point to Octave (instead of two as we have
> today). I don't want to change the way packages are developed, I think
> that part works quite good.
> 
> > | Personally, I use the function reference
> > |      on the Octave-Forge website quite a bit, and I also find the doxygen 
> > stuff
> > |      useful. I don't see why this stuff isn't on the Octave website.
> > 
> > Because no one has put it there?
> 
> And I wouldn't mind putting it there (i.e. I'd be willing to do the
> work). Actually I would like to move as much of the Octave-Forge web
> site onto octave.org if possible. However, I don't want to work on both
> www.octave.org and octave.sf.net as that is simply too much work (and
> web stuff is really boring...).
> 
> Today, I guess I do most of the work on octave.sf.net, and I'm not
> really doing a particular good job. So, it seems to me that nobody want
> to do the web stuff, which is why I would like to get rid of the
> octave.sf.net web page -- then there would only be one page to work on.
> 
> > If they are merged, then you are effectively saying that the
> > contributed packages are part of the (GNU) Octave project, so then I
> > think the packages would need to all agree to the principles of the
> > GNU project in the same way as I did when I agreed to make Octave a
> > GNU project.  Is that what you (and all current and future
> > contributors) want?
> 
> Now this is a really good point! I hadn't thought about that. While I'm
> a huge fan of GNU, I don't know if such an agreement would scare
> potential contributors away. We have a few non-Free packages on
> octave-forge, and I don't think these should be thrown away.
> 
> > I'm not sure savannah is much better, but I recently found that they
> > now support Mercurial so I'm hoping to be able to move my public
> > archive there (there will still be a redirect from octave.org).
> 
> The problem with sourceforge is that you have to upload each package
> manually -- since we have approx. 75 packages, that process is a bit
> tedious...
> 
> Søren
> 
> 



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