Re: [OctDev] complex error function

[Daniel J Sebald]

On 11/21/2012 11:50 AM, Thomas Weber wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 11:11:58AM -0500, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> > On 21 November 2012 10:56, Steven G. Johnson<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > > On 11/20/12 4:33 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> > > > I'm still not sure what to do with this code... It sounds useful,
> > > > sure, but you didn't write it for Octave except for a small wrapper.
> > >
> > >
> > > Not sure why that matters?  Most of the math and linear algebra functions in
> > > Octave were not written "for Octave".
> >
> > It matters from a maintainership and code ownership perspective. If
> > you're just making a library, why not actually just create such a
> > library and you go through the hassle of making releases instead of us
> > gluing your code into Octave? I sure don't want to have to keep two
> > different copies of the same code in different codebases each with its
> > own diverging set of bugs. Then we can maintain the Octave-specific
> > wrapper ourselves and you can keep maintaining your library.
>
> Are you guys seriously considering the creation of a library for 3-4
> functions? How many libraries would we have if BLAS was built in that
> way?
> Get the code included into one of the existing code bases (maybe [1])
> or implement erfc for libc. Less work for everybody.
>
> [1] 
> http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_52_0/libs/math/doc/sf_and_dist/html/math_toolkit/special/sf_erf/error_function.html
>
>         Thomas

That is a good idea.  It has the added advantage of getting a review and 
test from folks experienced in underlying math algorithms.

That being said, we do have some libraries in Octave that are pretty 
small and dedicated to a small set of functions.  A few months back we 
were looking at compiler warnings coming from some of these smaller 
libraries because they were written in C but compiled as C++.

Dan