[Pkg-octave-devel] octave-forge

[Ólafur Jens Sigurðsson]

On Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 11:35:06AM +0200, Thomas Weber wrote:
> Am Sonntag, den 16.09.2007, 10:07 +0200 schrieb Ólafur Jens Sigurðsson:
> > On Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 08:50:39AM +0200, Thomas Weber wrote:
> > > Am Sonntag, den 16.09.2007, 02:16 +0200 schrieb Ólafur Jens Sigurðsson:
> > > > Why not have the package so that it contains the .tar.gz and an install
> > > > script that unzips the file and installs each package through octave
> > > > --eval "pkg install $pkgname" and then clean up after it on the
> > > > filesystem???
> > > > 
> > > > I am somehow certain that the thought must have crossed your minds 
> > > 
> > > Speaking only for myself: no, this thought didn't cross my mind. But
> > > then again, which problem would it solve? 
> > > 
> > > What I can tell you is that local package compilation is difficult
> > > (which compiler is chosen, are the libraries installed and compiled with
> > > a suited compiler, ...). Gentoo has solved that problem, but I don't
> > > think we should copy Portage.
> > 
> > I dont know Gentoo or Portage, but libraries and all that .. isnt that
> > what the dependencies are for? If you set the dependencies right then
> > you should not have a problem or what?
> 
> Part of the dependencies are extracted at built time. That is, I say
> "fftw3" and the build system takes the current state and checks which
> libraries must be set as dependency. If later versions of fftw have an
> incompatible change, the packages must be recompiled. Depending on the
> kind of change, these recompilations are triggered by the release team,
> with no involvement of the maintainers. Thus, as end user you must copy
> this work. Frankly, if you want to do this on a larger scale, I think
> Gentoo or even Linux from Scratch are what you are looking for.

Thanks for the info, getting a bit better picture of what the problem
is now :-)

> But again: which problem is the local compile supposed to solve?

Well, I was trying to solve the problem of not having a debian package
for the forge, a bit megalomanic of me :-)

So the problem is that to make a debian package you have to compile
the source before it is delivered to the user? Ok, that complicates
things a lot. But still, it is a question of knowing where to put the
files and how to let the octave system know that they are installed.
Do you know how to do that?

Just out of curiosity, what are the problems that you see in packaging
the forge?

Oli