[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#575896: Bug#575896: Packaging of 3.3.51 in experimental?

[Thomas Weber]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 11:05:51AM +0200, Svante Signell wrote:
> Package: octave3.2
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> Is there any interest to package the development versions of Octave and
> place them in experimental? 

Not from me.

> It nwould be nice to try them out (and
> compare with previous versions) before released as 3.4.x. Or is the
> only option to download, build and install from source?

There are two reasons for me not trying to do that:

1) Distribution-specific:
I want to get rid of the version numbers in the package names of
octave in Debian. That is, no more octave3.X, but just one octave
package. Easier on maintenance both for octave and octave-forge
packages, far less confusion for users and less differences among
distributions.

This is a post-Squeeze goal and will be attempted with the Octave 3.4
series. There are some serious changes in octave's build code, so it
will take some time for me to get it right. 

2) Upstream-specific:
I don't see a point in shipping a development snapshot in a
distribution. The first thing when reporting a bug in that snapshot
would be to try it with the then current sources. 

So, you are better of starting with the mercurial tip anyway.

	Thomas