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

[Philip Nienhuis]

Sébastien Villemot wrote:
> Philip Nienhuis<address@hidden>  writes:
>
> > 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.
>
> I also think that in its current state, the package is not very useful
> on Debian. I am personally frustated of not being able to read an XLS
> file, but I intend to change that.

? I don't understand, sorry.
On my Linux boxes (Mandriva), Octave can read/write .xls and .ods w/o 
any problems using io and java pkgs.
For a little while I tried Ubuntu - worked OK there as well.

If you encounter problems with the io pkg, please report them in the 
[OctDev] octave-forge help mailing list and I'll try to fix them.

> > >                                           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 intention is to use a "Recommends" dependency in the future. In the
> context of Debian, it means that java will be downloaded by default when
> io is downloaded (though the user will still be able to override this
> default behavior).

Probably obvious, but then the OF java package needs to be dependent on 
a Java- (at least:) JRE. Or a JDK if it is to be compiled after download.

Philip