Re: maintaining some packages at core Octave (was: Re: OctConf 2018, second day -- a lot of discussions and some work done)

[Olaf Till]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 08:40:32AM -0400, Doug Stewart wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 8:27 AM, Juan Pablo Carbajal <address@hidden>
> wrote:
> > ...
> > We could have 'core','community' and 'external' packages as packages
> > categories in OF, in which 'core' has all the core development
> > standards (including a named branch "stable" used as in core). As an
> > extra benefit, delineating the criteria to classify as a 'core'
> > package in OF might go in the same direction as providing better
> > documentation for developers.
> >
> I agree with JPi on the three categories.
> ...
> I also like the idea of packaging these "core" packages with the released
> version
> of octave, but still have the ability to use forge and update to newer pkgs
> as they come available.

For the suggested core packages, apart from the question of the
location (OF or core Octave), the following changes seem to be
proposed:

1. Include only selected functions (maybe ML-compatible functions),

2. clearly designate these packages as core (it could be considered to
  (also) mark the selected functions (see 1.) as core),

3. only support current Octave version.

AFAICS, 1. and 2. are hoped to draw more attention to these packages
(functions). (Have you an indication that this will indeed happen?
Maybe from discussions at OctConf?)

Point 3. seems to be meant to spare our resources. A valid point. But
is it really necessary to 'forbid' supporting elder Octave versions?

Anyway, in the case of still hosting these packages at OF, the
following could be an applicable scheme:

- We mark such packages as 'core'.

- Within a package:

-- we select functions which should get more attention as 'core
   package functions'; to mark these, only these will be in inst/ and
   src/ .

-- all other functions go under inst-extra/ and src-extra/ and are
   pulled in by src/Makefile, so they are still available.

- We only support the current Octave version (?). I.e. a stable branch
  supports only the latest major release and a development branch
  supports the development version of Octave.

Olaf

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