Here is the discussion I just had with him:
22:05 < sebastien> terceiro: support for octave-* in autodep8 has just been committed on a new octave branch by Rafael Laboissière https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/autodep8.git/commit/?h=octave
22:19 < terceiro> sebastien: "Try to select only the packages from Octave-Forge that are maintained by the Debian Octave Group" seems wrong
22:19 < terceiro> it should support all octave packages, not an arbitrary subset
22:20 < terceiro> and `Test-Command: debian/rules check-pkg` also looks wrong, as autopkgtest is intended to test the *installed* package and not the source package
22:21 < sebastien> the explanation to both of your remarks is that the test infrastructure is currently in octave-pkg-dev (which is our cdbs add-on)
22:21 < sebastien> so 1) we do not test packages that do not rely on that helper (though the description should be improved)
22:22 < sebastien> and 2) this actually tests the installed package (but through debian/rules because it is cdbs)