Re: Fwd: [Pkg-octave-devel] Popcon stats for the DOG packages

[Philip Nienhuis]

Sébastien Villemot wrote:
> PhilipNienhuis<address@hidden>  writes:
>
> > Intriguing to see the io pkg at 541 "units" (whatever "units" means), and
> > the java pkg at just 35, while the java package is a dependency for io on
> > non-windows systems....
>
> This is because java was packaged later than io on Debian. And since some
> functionality of io works without java,

Sure, that would be Nastran PCH reading, JSON writing and some oldies 
like fexist.m whose functionality is currently (in a much better way) 
covered in core octave.....
append-save.m (that wasn't changed much since its creation in 2003) 
might not even work anymore with current octave versions. However it's 
not my code so I don't bother much.

On *nix, all other functions (spreadsheet I/O) are only useful if the 
java package is installed.

>                                          the dependency is not enforced
> on Debian. We should probably change that in the future.

Formally the dependency on java pkg is "suggested", and I think it 
should stay that way for (1) the reason you gave above and (2) on 
Windows there's an alternative (windows pkg).

My point was more about *users* downloading & installing the io pkg w/o 
the java package (or did I misunderstand?)
I'd conclude that situation can only mean that I underestimated the need 
out there for JSON/PCH/fexist functionality....

Philip