[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#572649: octave3.2: break alternatives configuration

[Drew Parsons]

Package: octave3.2
Version: 3.2.4-3
Severity: normal

octave3.2 does not respect the alternatives setting (the symlinks for
/usr/bin/octave, set with update-alternatives).

There are two aspects to the bug.

1) Firstly, the default alternatives setting is "auto". In principle
this is fine, except that it's automatically going to octave3.0
instead of octave3.2. I don't know if this is a bug or not but it's
certainly annoying.

2) More significantly, octave3.2 simply does not respect the
alternatives configuration made manually via  "update-alternatives --config octave".
Because of the auto config bug described above, I need to use manual
configuration to switch the alternatives configuration from "auto (=octave3.0)" 
to octave3.2 explicitly.  But whenever octave3.2 is upgraded (the most
recent is today's new version 3.2.4-3), the alternatives configuration
is reset back to "auto" (and therefore back to octave3.0).

It's truly distressing to find your scripts all of a sudden fail to
work for no reason at all. All because your default version of octave
was silently downgraded.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.33-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages octave3.2 depends on:
ii  libamd2.2.0      1:3.4.0-1               approximate minimum degree orderin
ii  libarpack2       2.1+parpack96.dfsg-2+b1 Fortran77 subroutines to solve lar
ii  libatlas3gf-base 3.6.0-24                Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra
ii  libblas3gf [libb 1.2-4                   Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines 3
ii  libbz2-1.0       1.0.5-4                 high-quality block-sorting file co
ii  libc6            2.10.2-6                Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcamd2.2.0     1:3.4.0-1               symmetric approximate minimum degr
ii  libccolamd2.7.1  1:3.4.0-1               constrained column approximate lib
ii  libcholmod1.7.1  1:3.4.0-1               sparse Cholesky factorization libr
ii  libcolamd2.7.1   1:3.4.0-1               column approximate minimum degree 
ii  libcurl3-gnutls  7.19.7-1                Multi-protocol file transfer libra
ii  libcxsparse2.2.3 1:3.4.0-1               concise sparse matrix library (com
ii  libfftw3-3       3.2.2-1                 library for computing Fast Fourier
ii  libfltk1.1       1.1.10-2                Fast Light Toolkit - shared librar
ii  libfreetype6     2.3.11-1                FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libftgl2         2.1.3~rc5-3             library to render text in OpenGL u
ii  libgcc1          1:4.4.3-3               GCC support library
ii  libgfortran3     4.4.3-3                 Runtime library for GNU Fortran ap
ii  libgl1-mesa-glx  7.7-4                   A free implementation of the OpenG
ii  libglpk0         4.43-1                  linear programming kit with intege
ii  libglu1-mesa [li 7.7-4                   The OpenGL utility library (GLU)
ii  libgomp1         4.4.3-3                 GCC OpenMP (GOMP) support library
ii  libgraphicsmagic 1.3.11-1                format-independent image processin
ii  libgraphicsmagic 1.3.11-1                format-independent image processin
ii  libhdf5-serial-1 1.8.4-5                 Hierarchical Data Format 5 (HDF5) 
ii  libice6          2:1.0.6-1               X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libjasper1       1.900.1-7               The JasPer JPEG-2000 runtime libra
ii  libjpeg62        6b-16.1                 The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG 
ii  liblapack3gf [li 3.2.1-2                 library of linear algebra routines
ii  liblcms1         1.18.dfsg-1.2+b1        Color management library
ii  libltdl7         2.2.6b-2                A system independent dlopen wrappe
ii  libncurses5      5.7+20090803-2          shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libpcre3         7.8-3                   Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expressi
ii  libpng12-0       1.2.43-1                PNG library - runtime
ii  libqhull5        2009.1-1                calculate convex hulls and related
ii  libqrupdate1     1.0.1-1                 Fast updates of QR and Cholesky de
ii  libreadline6     6.1-1                   GNU readline and history libraries
ii  libsm6           2:1.1.1-1               X11 Session Management library
ii  libstdc++6       4.4.3-3                 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libtiff4         3.9.2-3+b1              Tag Image File Format (TIFF) libra
ii  libumfpack5.4.0  1:3.4.0-1               sparse LU factorization library
ii  libwmf0.2-7      0.2.8.4-6.1             Windows metafile conversion librar
ii  libx11-6         2:1.3.3-1               X11 client-side library
ii  libxext6         2:1.1.1-2               X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxml2          2.7.6.dfsg-2+b1         GNOME XML library
ii  octave3.2-common 3.2.4-3                 architecture-independent files for
ii  texinfo          4.13a.dfsg.1-5          Documentation system for on-line i
ii  zlib1g           1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3        compression library - runtime

Versions of packages octave3.2 recommends:
ii  gnuplot                       4.2.6-1    A command-line driven interactive 
ii  libatlas3gf-base              3.6.0-24   Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra

Versions of packages octave3.2 suggests:
pn  octave3.2-doc                 <none>     (no description available)
ii  octave3.2-emacsen             3.2.4-3    Emacs support for the GNU Octave l
pn  octave3.2-headers             <none>     (no description available)
pn  octave3.2-htmldoc             <none>     (no description available)
ii  octave3.2-info                3.2.4-3    GNU Info documentation on the GNU 

-- no debconf information