[Pkg-octave-devel] Fwd: Popcon stats for the DOG packages

[Sébastien Villemot]

Philip Nienhuis <pr.nienhuis at hccnet.nl> writes:

> Sébastien Villemot wrote:
>> PhilipNienhuis<pr.nienhuis at hccnet.nl>  writes:
>>
>>> Intriguing to see the io pkg at 541 "units" (whatever "units" means), and
>>> the java pkg at just 35, while the java package is a dependency for io on
>>> non-windows systems....
>>
>> This is because java was packaged later than io on Debian. And since some
>> functionality of io works without java,
>
> Sure, that would be Nastran PCH reading, JSON writing and some oldies like
> fexist.m whose functionality is currently (in a much better way) covered in
> core octave.....
> append-save.m (that wasn't changed much since its creation in 2003) might not
> even work anymore with current octave versions. However it's not my code so I
> don't bother much.
>
> On *nix, all other functions (spreadsheet I/O) are only useful if the java
> package is installed.

I also think that in its current state, the package is not very useful
on Debian. I am personally frustated of not being able to read an XLS
file, but I intend to change that.

>>                                          the dependency is not enforced
>> on Debian. We should probably change that in the future.
>
> Formally the dependency on java pkg is "suggested", and I think it should stay
> that way for (1) the reason you gave above and (2) on Windows there's an
> alternative (windows pkg).

My intention is to use a "Recommends" dependency in the future. In the
context of Debian, it means that java will be downloaded by default when
io is downloaded (though the user will still be able to override this
default behavior).

-- 
Sébastien Villemot
Researcher in Economics & Debian Maintainer
http://www.dynare.org/sebastien
Phone: +33-1-40-77-84-04 - GPG Key: 4096R/381A7594
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