[Pkg-octave-devel] Size of the octave-forge packages

[Thomas Weber]

On 23/03/08 09:59 +0100, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:
> * Thomas Weber <thomas.weber.mail at gmail.com> [2008-03-22 23:47]:
> 
> > I'm currently reading through the control files and frankly, I have some
> > doubts with several packages:
> > 
> > I take special-matrices as an example: 
> > This package ships 1(!) .m file, consisting of 7(!) lines[1] of code
> > (ignoring comments). The corresponding debian/control file has 18 lines,
> > about half of which are compulsive.
> > 
> > If ftp-masters reject this, I can't really blame them. 
> > 
> > [1] Of these 7 lines, 3 are argument checking ...
> 
> Yes, this particular package is an overkill.  We could put it on hold for
> now., waiting for one of the following: either more functions are added
> upstream, or pkg.m is patched for accepting directories instead of only
> tarballs and we could include lauchli.m into another package (e.g.
> octave-miscellaneous).

This is not so much an issue for us, but also for users. Can you
imagine yourself going through a list of 40 packages and installing each
one of them? I don't think I choose 40 individual Debian packages when
installing a new system from scratch. 

I bet it won't take four weeks and we have a wishlist bug
for a virtual octave-forge package, pulling in all other packages. At
which point we would end up with the same situation as with the
monolithic package: everybody installs everything.

	Thomas