Re: [octave:package-releases] #43 msh-1.0.7

[Carnë Draug]

On 4 July 2013 19:43, c. <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> On 4 Jul 2013, at 20:03, Carnë Draug <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> They won't discard it, they would just make it a dependency.
>
> Not really, my worries are due to something that happened in the past.
>
> There is (or at least there was in the past) a packaging
> bug that prevented gmsh and octave to be installed at the same time
> on debian. As a result they stopped packaging msh because they saw
> the warning about missing gmsh binary when installing msh, even
> though it was just a warning and it clearly stated that the package
> would be still usable.
>
> So as supporting debian is important to me and the debian packagers
> seem to be really sensitive to what is a dependency, I'd like to make
> it very clear that this dependency is optional.
>
> So that in case there is any conflict between the fenics and Octave packages
> msh does not get thrown out again.

But the solution is not to hide it from the DESCRIPTION file. Whatever
is listed as build requirements is ignored by pkg. It's the configure
script that will issue a warning about a missing library and disabled
features, and it's the dolfin functions that will issue an error if
they were built without that feature.

>> You can
>> leave a note on the DESCRIPTION file saying that it's optional but
>> that would solve nothing. Would you rather have them distributing a
>> half-working binary?
>
> The msh package is fully functional even without dolfin so YES, I would like
> msh to be distributed even for systems where fenics is not available, but NO,
> I wouldn't call it a "half-working binary".
>
> This is the whole purpose of the configure tests in the msh package, if
> dolfin is not available then invoking a function that depends on dolfin will
> issue an error and die gracefully, just like it is done in Octave when
> an optional package, e.g. arpack/eigs, is missing.
>
>> It needs the dolfin library to work.
>
> No, it doesn't. that's my point. It will take advantage of it if present,
> but will work fine if not. That's my definition of "optional".

If Debian distributed a build of Octave without GraphicsMagick, I
would call it a half-working binary. And if Debian distributed an
Octave binary with all the optional libraries disabled (including
plotting), I'm pretty sure everyone would call it a half working
binary as well.

The thing is, if someone using Debian needs those "optional"
functions, then they will have to build the msh package again, even
though Debian distributes the binary.

Anyway, you can discuss that with the Debian developers but please
don't hide it from the DESCRIPTION file. Mark it as optional as you're
already doing for gmsh and awk.

Carnë