[Pkg-octave-devel] Lenny release goals for the DOG

[Rafael Laboissiere]

Since the soft freeze of lenny is approaching [1] it is time for us to
discuss about the possible release goals for the DOG packages.  I propose
these candidates:

1) Make octave3.0 work on arm
=============================

This is actually more than a candidate, it is actually a necessity.  Without
fixing this, there are no chances octave3.0 will be shipped with lenny.  It
is quite ironic because arm is such an unimportant architecture for Octave
developers and users.  Anyway, this is how Debian works.  Since arm is an
official architecture for lenny and since octave3.0 and reverse depending
packages existed once for arm, it is very hard (if not almost impossible) to
drop it.

I believe that the problem does not lie in the Octave code itself.  We are
then left with this non-exhaustive list of possible solutions:

* Fix the problem in the GCC arm toolchain.  This is beyond our (at least
  mine) capabilities.

* Try some workarounds like coping with alloca or forcing the build with a
  different version of GCC (4.1 or 4.3).  We are currently trying the later.

* Ask the release-team and ftp-master admins to drop the arm architecture
  for octave3.0.

* Ask for help to the debian-arm team (we already tried this, to no avail).


2) Octave-Forge packages
========================
  
Thanks to the initial work by Ólafur Sigurðsson, we are getting close to
this goal.  I urge you to test the octave-pkg-dev package now in SVN (see my
previous posts in pkg-octave-devel).

Remember that we have to fill ITPs for each new package being created and
that they will have to go through the NEW queue. This will take time.  We
cannot have the packages immediately in unstable.


3) Get rid of octave2.9
=======================

I mean the source package octave2.9, because the binary dummy package
octave2.9 will be in lenny fora a smooth transition from etch.  There is
currently a single package blocking this goal: qtoctave.  Jordi Gutiérrez is
taking care of this.


4) Others?
==========

Suggestions are welcome.


[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/02/msg00002.html

-- 
Rafael