[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#333683: O: octave-statdataml, r-cran-statdataml, and r-cran-xml

[Rafael Laboissiere]

Package: wnpp
Severity: normal


Some time ago I packaged StatDataML (http://www.omegahat.org/StatDataML/)
for Debian hoping that it would be a solution for communicating data between
Octave and R.  The current version of the statdataml package (1.0.9) still
has me as maintainer, although I already put the sources in the SVN
repository of the Debain Octave Group (http://pkg-octave.alioth.debian.org).

In the meanwhile, I started using exclusively HDF5 for transferring data
between Octave and R and I think this is a superior approach, not to mention
the fact that I am now also able to use Perl to read/write the data files.

The statdataml source package generates two binary packages:
octave-statdataml and r-cran-statdataml.  This last one depends on
r-cran-xml, which I also packaged for Debian.

Now, the scoops:

1) Both r-cran-statdataml and r-cran-xml have been made available by the
   Debian BioCondutor Group (http://pkg-bioc.alioth.debian.org/).  BTW, the
   versions present in their apt-getable repository
   (http://public.pzr.uni-rostock.de/~moeller/mirror/) are more recent than
   those packaged by me.

2) The newest upstream version of StatDataML 1.0-10
   (http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Descriptions/StatDataML.html) even
   does not contain the Octave part which was present in 1.0-9.

3) The Octave part of StatDataML 1.0-9 even does work correctly with g++
   4.0.  I do not know whether the problems comes really from octave 2.1.71,
   from libxml2 in sid, from the compiler, or from a combination of all
   those.  I do not have the time/interest in debugging this problem.

4) A bug report has been recently filed against r-cran-xml
   (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=330622).  This is an
   upstream problem and I even do not know whether the most recent upstream
   version of the fixes it.  (Again, my time/interest on this is very
   scarce).

Under all this circumstances, I am abandoning the StatDataML packages as
well as r-cran-xml.  This orphaning bug report against wnpp is the first
step before asking for removal of the packages from the FTP archive.

-- 
Rafael


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