[Pkg-octave-devel] Infrastructure for octave-forge packages

[Rafael Laboissiere <rafael@debian.org>]

Thanks to the work started by Ólafur, I implemented a proof-of-concept
package which is a helper for building octave-forge packages using pkg.m. I
committed a preliminary version of the package to SVN and it is called, for
now, octave-pkg-dev (suggestions for a better name are welcome).

In order to test it, just check out and build the package:

    svn co svn+ssh://svn.debian.org/svn/pkg-octave/octave-pkg-dev/trunk octave-pkg-dev
    cd octave-pkg-dev
    sudo apt-get install debhelper cdbs
    debuild -us -uc -i
    sudo debi

I tested it with the octave-combinatorics package by Ólafur.  In
debian/control, I put:

    Build-Depends: octave-pkg-dev

and debian/rules is just a two-lines file:

    #!/usr/bin/make -f
    include /usr/share/octave/debian/octave-pkg-dev.mk

The package builds, install, and runs fine here.

Comments on this work are welcome.  The octave-pkg-dev package current in
SVN is really preliminary and many improvement will/can be done (eg. remove
the dh-make boilerplates).

I copied almost verbatim the contents of the debian/rules from
octave-combinatorics into octave-pkg-dev.mk.  The code needs some polishing
and tests with other octave-forge packages are needed, of course.

Also, I will introduce a mechanism for setting ${octave:Depends} to be used
in the Depends field of the package being built.

I am really excited with the pkg.m stuff finally going on.  Thanks for your
initial work, Ólafur!

-- 
Rafael