[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#672651: Bug#672651: Bug#672651: Bug#672651: octave-common: pkg prefix global config breaks local package installation

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 13 May 2012 10:48, Mike Miller <mtmiller at ieee.org> wrote:
> I see your points and agree that this is the Debian way, but ideally
> the Debian way doesn't get in the way of users installing their own
> packages or Forge packages not yet in Debian.

Yeah, I would prefer to keep the Debian packages up-to-date than to
suggest to people to use pkg install. Source distribution is *very*
un-Debian. This isn't Gentoo. Chasing dependencies and compiling is
difficult, brittle, and frustrating. We should be recommending this as
seldom as possible.

> Now that 3.6 is going out, if users read the manual and see this new
> "pkg install -forge" feature they might think they can actually use
> it on their system :)

We should add something in README.Debian about how you really
shouldn't be using pkg.

> I'm a Debian user but also an Octave developer, I'm aware I'm not
> the average user.

Yeah, me too. What I do is that I mostly forego the Debian packages
altogether. I regularly compile and install several concurrent
versions of Octave and OF packages, but that's because I want to be
involved with development. If you don't want development, you
shouldn't need to ever use pkg install in Debian. If you are
sophisticated enough to be using pkg install, then you're also
sophisticated enough to modify /etc/octave.conf.

> I see it the same way as emacs, python, ruby, name your favorite
> tool, where Debian has packaged a lot of good extensions /
> libraries, but also has in place the configuration for site admins
> and/or users to install whatever they want outside of the Debian
> packaging system.

I personally make Debian packages for most of these. There's
dh-make-perl for Perl, py2dsc for Python, most things I care about
Emacs go into my .emacs (I use a fairly minimal install), and I don't
use Ruby because they have been very bad in the past about easing
packaging.

I like having a single package manager, apt, for everything. I am not
fond of having a different package manager per programming language.

- Jordi G. H.