[Pkg-octave-devel] Octave 3.0 or 3.2 in wheezy

[Thomas Weber]

Hi, 
On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 11:38:18AM +0000, Alberto Hamilton wrote:
>  searching Squeeze repositories I've noticed that Octave3.6 is not
> available for Squeeze and, as you confirm, Octave3.2 is not available in
> Wheezy. Octave 3.6, almost Control toolbox, is incompatible with 3.2. 

I don't quite understand your problem. AFAIK, the only incompatible
change in 3.6 should be 'broadcasting'[1]. If you are talking about the
control package, then you have to talk to whoever maintains it these
days (however, please be aware that the package was essentially
unmaintained for quite some time - whoever took it is doing a hell of a
lot of work with it).

> So, even if I had known Octave's changes, I wouldn't have had a period
> of time to make the changes. Not only me, but several user working in
> Octave in Squeeze, when they update to Wheezy, will find that their code
> becomes nonfunctional.

And I will happily forward all their complains and bug reports to
the upstream bug tracker and mailing lists. In case it's not clear: I
share quite some of your criticism, but you are shouting at the wrong
people. We simply do not have the man power to maintain several Octave
versions in Debian (which wouldn't be helpful anyway, because we would
also need all octave-forge packages for the different versions).

> I think this is not the way Debian used to evolve in the past, and is
> not a good way to evolve. 

Actually I think it is the way Debian evolves (see KDE 4, Gnome 3,
etc.). Is it a good way? No idea, but there is simply not enough
manpower to maintain this kind of stack with different versions.

> IMHO, It's convenient to provide the users with a time while both
> versions are available to allow a smooth transition.

<shrug> Just go ahead and do it. I know that I do NOT have the time to
do it. We used to do it and it was pain for everyone whenever we
switched to a new major Octave version.

[1] I am particularly unhappy about the way this new feature is
introduced, but at the end, it is not my decision. 

	Thomas