[Pkg-octave-devel] Python script in latest miscellaneous package

[Rafael Laboissiere]

* Thomas Weber <tweber at debian.org> [2014-06-09 19:47]:

> On Mon, Jun 09, 2014 at 04:24:43PM +0200, Sébastien Villemot wrote:
>> Le lundi 09 juin 2014 à 16:05 +0200, Thomas Weber a écrit :
>>
>>> miscellaneous 1.2.1 include a python script (inst/physical_constant.py) 
>>> for downloading and converting physical constants from the NIST website. 
>>> Right now, the script ends up in the installation directory. Should we 
>>> move it into /usr/bin (or whatever the correct path for python scripts 
>>> is)? On the one hand, this seems to be correct, on the other hand, I 
>>> don't want the added overhead of dealing with the Debian Python policy.
>>
>> Is this python script launched from an Octave function/script, or 
>> directly by the user from a shell? If this is the former, then leaving 
>> it in the installation directory is the right thing to do. If this is 
>> the latter, then /usr/bin is the path mandated by the FHS (and therefore 
>> the Debian Policy).
>
> AFAIK, it is not used at all in the released package, neither by a 
> script nor by the user during normal usage. One can use the script to 
> obtain updated values from NIST; but it is not clear to me if this is 
> indeed the intended use. In other words, physical_constants.m is 
> generated via physical_constants.py, when the latter is called by the 
> user.

It seems that physical_constants.py is only useful at upstream-tarball 
building time.  In this case, I would completely remove it from the 
binary package or, at best, put it in /usr/share/doc.  It is true that 
users might have a need for it, but how often is the NIST database 
updated?

Rafael