Re: Re: merge classdef to default?

[Michael Goffioul]

On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Stefan Mahr <address@hidden> wrote:

>>>  There's preliminary support in the classdef branch. It started here:
>>>
>>> http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/7368654f302f?revcount=240[http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/7368654f302f?revcount=240]
>> Should we merge the classdef branch to default?

>> If we do it now, does it cause any harm to have it in the upcoming release?  I suppose that since it is incomplete, people will try it and have some trouble, then report bugs.  But we can (try to) make it clear that it is a preliminary work in progress.
>>
>> If you think it will cause more harm than good, then we can delay the merge until after we merge default to stable for the release.
>> 
> That's a difficult decision. But if the classdef support was not part of the original feature list, I'd say leave it for later. I don't think  it would cause any harm to merge, most of the code is independent from the rest of octave, except for the package support which touched the load-path and symbol-table aspects. The problem is indeed to have only partial classdef support and advertise it. I'm not opposed to the merge, bug if it's to get tons of bug report about things not being supported/implemented, then no thanks.

>  
> Maybe we could add a big fat warning, whenever some aspects of classdef are being used, that say this is WIP > and incomplete, please don't report any bugs about unimplemented features?
> 

> Michael.

Is it possible to merge it to default branch, but tell the interpreter to disable it as default? The user could enable it with a command line option like '--enable-incomplete-classdef'.

There are structural changes in load-path and symbol-table components to support package (like changes in method signatures). Those cannot be (easily) disabled with a runtime flag. The rest, like being able to load classdef files, could be disabled with a runtime flag.

Michael.