[Pkg-octave-devel] [RFC] patch octave to help users install auxiliary packages

[Thomas Weber]

On Mon, Aug 05, 2013 at 03:04:12PM -0400, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> On 3 August 2013 06:33, Rafael Laboissiere <rafael at laboissiere.net> wrote:
> > * Mike Miller <mtmiller at ieee.org> [2013-08-01 09:42]:
> We happen to like Debian and it's probably (through Ubuntu) the
> biggest distributor of Octave on GNU-based systems, so I can imagine
> that jwe might approve such a patch, but still, if it's a patch that
> concerns Debian packaging, shouldn't it be only kept in Debian repos?
> Or should we make the patch more generic and say something like "look
> for packages like this in your generic distribution"?

Upstream is the wrong level for this sort of patch - after a while, you
have detection code for
Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/Redhat/OpenSuse/TopDistroWatchDistributionOfTheMonth/...

If it's just about the 'doc' command, we might as well strictly depeond
on octave-info for the interpreter - the info files are not that large.
The more interesting case is 'mkoctfile'.

I do not mind a patch, but I would prefer to keep it in Debian (I tend
to think that jwe would also prefer this). Should we do it for both or
just mkoctfile (and always install the octave-info package?).

	Thomas