Bug#403591: [Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#403591: octave2.1-forge: Please do not use /usr/bin/mex in the future

[Thomas Weber]

Hi Frank,

Am Montag, den 18.12.2006, 10:55 +0100 schrieb Frank Küster:
> Package: octave2.1-forge, texlive-lang-polish
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> Look at this, a fortunate coincidence:
> 
> $ findpkg bin/mex
> oldstable
> usr/bin/mex						    math/octave-forge
> stable
> usr/bin/mex						    math/octave-forge
> testing
> usr/bin/mex						    tex/texlive-lang-polish
> usr/bin/mex2.1						    math/octave2.1-forge
> unstable
> usr/bin/mex						    tex/texlive-lang-polish
> usr/bin/mex2.1						    math/octave2.1-forge

We discussed this with Norbert Preining some time ago. The mex binary in
octave* packages will vanish (this is an unrelated upstream decision). 


> Although the TeX incarnateion of the mex binary (actually a symlink) has
> been introduced into Debian only recently, it has been in use in the TeX
> community for years.  The same is probably true for Matlab/Octave's mex,
> so it's very fortunate that we do not need to argue who should give up
> the name, or do it both.

This is more due to the fact that we have both Octave 2.1 and 2.9 in
Debian and appended the number to every binary for a distinction ;)


> TeXlive upstream has recently discussed this and decided to keep things
> unchanged, you can read the thread starting at
> 
> http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2006-December/011670.html

I don't consider this to be a real bug. Matlab should be installed under
the /usr/local hierarchy and users can then set up aliases as they
please (btw, we have Matlab here and most users don't use the mex
interface at all). 


> P.S. in Ubuntu ($whatever_strange_animal) there's a file conflict
> between the packages...

Yes, from the time when octave-forge was a real package. 

	Thomas