[Pkg-octave-devel] Status of packages before etch freeze
With the entering of version 0.3.9-1 of octplot in testing today, our
packages are all ready for etch (although the freeze is a bit delayed, see
[1]). I am glad with the fact that Debian users will have the latest version
of all Octave-related software. Unfortunately, the release of etch happens at a
time when upstream development is very active.
First, the 2.9 branch of Octave will soon become the de facto stable version
[2]. When this will happen, the Debian packages will become immediately
outdated because the virtual "octave" package depends on octave2.1 and not
on octave2.9. We could fix this with an new upload of the octave package. I
think we still have room for doing it before etch freezes. However, this
would also the other packages (inline-octave, octaviz, octplot, and
octave-epstk) would need to be rebuilt against octave2.9. Doing all this
before the freeze is quite tight, so I would like to hear the opinion of the
DOG members.
Second, octave-forge switched recently to the new package manager [3],
although it is only on CVS for now. This new upstream organization will
imply lots of changes in the Debian packages. We will probably adopt a new
framework for semi-automatic generation of packages, similar to the
BioC/CRAN packages [4]. Lots of development effort will be needed on this
and it will be done necessarily post-etch.
Finally, we are doing quite well as regards the open bugs reports. Most of
them are upstream problems and have been appropriately tagged/forwarded.
Only Bug#367165 (octave2.1: please put runtime libraries in /usr/lib, not
/usr/lib/octave-VERSION) is not yet tagged or forwarded because we do not
know really how to cope with it.
--
Rafael
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/10/msg00009.html
[2] https://www.cae.wisc.edu/pipermail/octave-maintainers/2006-October/000743.html
[3] http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=30721789&forum_id=4874
[4] http://wiki.debian.org/?AliothPkgBioc
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