[Pkg-octave-devel] unblock (pre-approval): octave/3.6.2-5

[Rafael Laboissiere]

Package: release.debian.org
Severity: normal
User: release.debian.org at packages.debian.org
Usertags: freeze-exception

We (the Debian Octave Group) have been discussing the issue described
below during the past days and are requiring the pre-approval for
octave/3.6.2-5, which would be uploaded to unstable to fix the issue with
the patch attached below.

The issue is the following: the liboctave-dev package depends on the
libhdf5-dev package which, on its turn, depends on the serial version of
the HDF5 library package (libhdf5-7).  This version of the HDF5 library
conflicts with the parallel versions (libhdf5-openmpi-7 and
libhdf5-mpich2-7). That means that liboctave-dev is not coinstallable
with the parallel versions of the HDF5 library, what prevents our users
of installing libcotave-dev together with the following packages (at
least):

$ apt-cache rdepends libhdf5-openmpi-7
libhdf5-openmpi-7
Reverse Depends:
  python-gmsh
  libjava-gmsh2
  libgmsh2
  gmsh
  getdp
  libfeel++1
  feel++-apps
  code-aster-mpi-engine
  code-aster-engine-dbg
  code-aster-engine
  libxdmf2
  libslepc3.2
  libsiloh5-0
  libpetsc3.2
  meep-openmpi
  libmeep-openmpi6
  libmedimport0
  libmedc1
  libmed1
  libmed-tools
  libhdf5-openmpi-dev
  libhdf5-openmpi-7-dbg
  code-saturne-bin
  libcdi0
  cdo
  libadios-dev

Note that this is a serious regression from squeeze.

We have a long history of complaints from our users about this issue (for
a recent case, see [1]).  For instance, packages like gmsh and
libhdf5-openmpi-dev, quite well placed in the Debian Popularity Contest
BTW (542 and 277 installations), cannot be coinstalled with
liboctave-dev.

Furthermore, earlier this year, we (the Debian Octave Groupe) had to
require the removal of the octave-msh [2] and octave-bim [3] packages,
because they could not be built from source, since they build-depend on
libhdf5-openmpi-7.  If the issue reported here is fixed, then we will be
able to introduced those packages in Debian again.

The (small) patch to fix the problem, attached below, has been prepared
by Sébastien Villemot and we have discussed about it in our mailing list
[4]. This patch changes a single line of the upstream file
src/mkoctfile.in and adds two alternative dependencies to liboctave-dev
in debian/control.

Thanks,

Rafael Laboissière

[1] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-octave-devel/2012-August/009582.html
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=665858
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=665860
[4] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-octave-devel/2012-August/009585.html
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