Re: [Octave Forge] Octave 4.0 call for packages

[JohnD]

> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2015 09:44:25 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Philip Nienhuis <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Octave Forge] Octave 4.0 call for packages
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Mike Miller-4 wrote
> > Dear Octave Forge maintainers,
> >
> > The first 4.0 release candidate has been out for some time now and we
> > don't expect any further changes to impact Octave Forge package
> > compatibility. At this time we would like to call for Octave Forge
> > package maintainers to release updated versions of packages if needed
> > that will build and work with the coming Octave release.
> >
> > For informational purposes, the current released versions of the
> > following packages fail to build properly with the first release
> > candidate:
> >
> >  * communications
> >  * control
> >  * dicom
> >  * image
> >  * odepkg
> >  * windows
> 
> Not being able to be built is one thing; but some packages are wholly or
partly
> incompatible or will break things if installed in a too new Octave
release. As a
> result user code may fail without any clue that an old OF package is the
cause.
> 
> E.g., general-1.3.4 overloads inputParser with outdated code. One
consequence
> is that some OF linear-algebra functions won't work properly if
> general-1.3.4 is loaded.
> Another PITA is the java package; we've had recurrent questions in the
help ML
> from users trying to install it in 3.8.2+ specfun still overloads
erfcinv(), expint()
> and ellipj().
> 
> I sometimes think it may be a good thing to renew some existing OF package
> releases with the only change being a maximum Octave version check, so
that
> unwary users at least have a warning that the package is incompatible with
the
> Octave version at hand.
> 
> Philip
> 

Someone asked a couple of weeks ago about what the selection criteria was
for packages added to the installer.

I believe it started off mainly as ones that were considered 'commonly used
ones'

In the past months, I also added several in the instances where they
required patching in order to install in windows, OR required dependencies
in order to compile.

So to the question ... Are we planning on adding as many packages as we can
to the install, a select set (and if so what ones?) 

JohnD