Re: [OctDev] moving Octave Forge mailing list to core's mailman server

[Carnë Draug]

On 26 November 2012 01:01, Daniel J Sebald <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 11/25/2012 04:10 PM, Carnė Draug wrote:
>>
>> On 25 November 2012 21:44, Daniel J Sebald<address@hidden>  wrote:
>> At the moment, the decision whether a thread belongs to the help or
>> octave-dev mailing list is whether the reply is "use package X from
>> octave forge". I'll argue that most Octave users already use at least
>> one of the Octave Forge packages. And I'll also argue that no one in
>> Octave Forge uses all the Octave Forge packages. So if the question is
>> how to use a function from an Octave Forge package, users on the help
>> mailing list already are the right people to answer it. Keeping them
>> separated makes no sense anymore.
>
> So there will be changes to the Octave webpage descriptions that
> consequently (or at least intend to) direct the bulk of OctDev to the
> "address@hidden" mailing list?

Yes. That's why this is being discussed in the maintainers mailing list.

>>>> There's plenty of applications and packages for Octave that are not
>>>> part of Forge.
>>>
>>>
>>> That doesn't mean Octave Forge isn't primarily about packages and
>>> applications.
>>
>>
>> What is this applications you keep talking about? There's only packages.
>
> You are thinking of applications as in hunk of software, I suspect.  I'm
> speaking in terms of applied science, e.g., signal processing, civil
> engineering, image processing, statistics.

Damn you homophones. Causing trouble since monkeys learned to talk.

>>> Yes and no.  I often see discussions of bugs.  Some bugs are
>>> straightforward
>>> and remain on the tracker.  Some are either vague and difficult to solve
>>> and
>>> warrant help from others, hence discussion list.  Some bugs expose an
>>> underlying weakness in design and warrant discussion about design
>>> modifications.
>>
>>
>> That may be true in core. I do not remember that ever happening in
>> forge. Considering the way development is done in Forge, I wouldn't
>> consider this to ever be a problem.
>
>
> "install package" would be the conceptual development there--now stable.

"install package" would already belong to the maintainers mailing list
since it's handled by pkg, itself part of core. It is, however, a very
good example of a maintainers discussion that developers of forge
should be involved.

>> Yes it is. Not one big change though, but slowly slowly seems to be
>> the direction it's taking. It doesn't make sense to make that question
>> yet, maybe it never will. But in the mean time, when things start to
>> overlap, such as in the case of the mailing lists, it makes sense to
>> merge them. We are not discussing more than just that, mailing lists.
>
>
> Getting rid of an active mailing list is more than a name change.  That
> traffic has to go somewhere.  I doubt the package concept is going away.

We are merging 3 mailing lists, whose subjects have been overlapping
too much and too often, into 2.