Re: OctConf 2018, second day -- a lot of discussions and some work done

[Carnë Draug]

On 14 March 2018 at 20:11, Olaf Till <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 11:51:53PM +0100, Carnë Draug wrote:
>>   2) core will start to include a subset of packages, the first of
>>   which will be for statistics.
>
> A short time ago Rik requested the statistics package to provide
> statistics functions which will be removed from core Octave. This has
> been done, by providing each of them in case they are detected to be
> lacking in core Octave. Including the statistics package into core
> Octave seems to go in the opposite direction.

Not really.  That move was about moving the functions from the core
functions into a statistics package and they will remain in a package.
It's just that this will be a core package that is included in the
Octave source releases.

> Or don't I see what in
> detail is meant by 'include'? And what is the rationale?

There were multiple reasons raised, the one I agree the most is the
recognition that this packages are too important and are the most
used.  So much so, that they should be distributed with Octave as core
packages (like python core packages for example).  Despite their
importance, their development does not get as much attention as core.
By having them as core packages, they will get the testing from the
more involved users which routinely test octave development versions.

For my personal case, if it ever gets around to be done for the image
package it would simplify maintenance since having to support so many
octave versions makes things a lot more complex.

Carnë