[Pkg-octave-devel] Sundials is way outdated

[Ghislain Vaillant]

On Sat, 2017-01-28 at 16:18 +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> [Dropped personal addresses, added Debian Octave Group]
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 10:59:55AM +0000, Ghislain Vaillant wrote:
> > > > 1. The matlab/octave interface seems poorly supported (upstream may or may
> > > > not drop it entirely), it uses a custom build script written in matlab
> > > > (which requires modification to work with octave), which means we don't get
> > > > multiarch easily. We could have dropped the interface, but it currently
> > > > works (afaik), and the real solution (split it out and make it a proper
> > > > octave package on octave-forge) would be time consuming and probably
> > > > wouldn't happen before the freeze.
> > 
> > Then, it shall be dropped in the next iteration of the packaging. We don't
> > need more volatile pieces of software being packaged.
> 
> BTW, if the octave module has some user base it might make sense to just
> keep the octave part from the 2.5 version. In the Debian changelog the
> package seems to have maintained initially by the octave group - may be
> these should be involved into the discussion.
>  
> > > > I did consider uploading something to experimental in the mean time, but
> > > > given there's a very real chance that what we uploaded to experimental
> > > > would not match what would result from discussions with upstream, the
> > > > package wouldn't of use to anybody, and probably create more confusion.
> > 
> > We would at least get feedback from the builders.
> 
> Definitely.
>  
> > > > If you do want get sundials into experimental, I'm happy to help, but I
> > > > think efforts spent on packaging sundials are best used to get upstream on
> > > > board with being an easier project to package (and to coordinate with
> > > > Fedora and other distros so that upstream sees this as a push from distros,
> > > > not specifically from Debian).
> > 
> > Why not, although if upstream is not so responsive as you made it sound,
> > then I am not sure what you will be able to achieve.
> > 
> > Reminds me of our situation with FreeImage.
> 
> Finally we somehow need to follow upstream releases to be able to
> package dependant software.  It makes sense to make them aware that
> distributions are relying on some standards.  There is a Fedora
> Scientific SIG and probably other distributions and making clear
> that it is a common requirement would have advantages - even for
> users who do not relay on distributed packages.
>  
> > Moving forward, I will noowner the ITA and let whoever is in charge take its
> > ownership. Please communicate your progress there and on the team's
> > mailing-list.

I have just set #798331 to noowner. Please follow the package adoption
guidelines in https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq.

Cheers,
Ghis