[Pkg-octave-devel] octave3.0 entering testing today + octave-forge pkgs

[Rafael Laboissiere]

The octave3.0 package was caught in a complex library transition for
suitesparse, lam, and hdf5 and involving dozens of other packages.  Thanks
to a hint by Mark 'HE' Brockschmidt, octave3.0 and other packages will enter
testing today.  More details can be found in a thread in debian-release [1].

It is now time to speed up the work on other DOG packages.  One obvious
thing to do is to finish the work on the octave-forge packages.  I am
disappointed by the large number of copyright problems that we found [2] but
I think we should go ahead and release the packages.  Those problems are not
serious and will be fixed in the future.  I hope that the ftp-masters will
give us a hard time when checking the packages in NEW.

BTW, how should we proceed as regards upstream?  Some of the copyright
problems have been already reported.  Should we reported all the problems
that we found (and will find) at once in a message to octave-dev?

As regards uploading the packages, remember that according to the release
schedule [3] we are in the "very soft freeze" period, which the Release Team
defined like this:

    Please start thinking about the release when uploading new major
    upstream versions. Only upload to unstable if you are sure that
    the software will be stable before we release. If you are not
    convinced, use experimental as staging area.

I do not think that we should release first to experimental, since the
octave-forge pkgs are not likely to break anything.  I would upload then
directly to unstable.  What do you think?

Otherwise, although there is no real hush, since the full freeze is schedule
for the mid of July 2008, let us remember the words of the Release Team:

    Please don't wait with uploads for the last day before the freeze,
    thanks.    

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2008/04/msg00164.html
[2] http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-octave/octave-forge-pkgs/TODO?op=file&rev=0&sc=0
[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/02/msg00002.html

-- 
Rafael