Re: More octave-forge functions!!!

[David Bateman]

Soren Hauberg wrote:

> I really like the way the R people are doing things. They essentially
> supply a base system, that only gives the most basic functionality. In
> fact if you only install the base system, you won't be able to much
> work. What the R people do next, is to have a rather large amount of
> packages that depends on external libraries. To help new users the R
> people have created a meta-package that depends on the recommended
> packages.
> 
> Would this be an option for Octave? That is, make the basic Octave
> fairly stripped down, with only the most essential dependencies. The
> provide one package that depends on qhull, one that depends on
> ImageMagick, etc. And then have a package called something like
> octave-matlab-compat that depends on all the packages needed to provide
> compatibility with core matlab.
> 
> Did that make any sense?
> 

I suppose that really is what toolboxes are. However, the politic at the
moment seems that if its in matlab core it should be in octave core. So
the above idea would require a redefinition of what core means. That is
the core would be the basic octave kernel with a number of additional
optional packages. So what is done in the autoconf of octave itself (ie
search for the dependencies), would be separated out into the autoconf
of the optional packages.


> Like everybody else on this list I'm busy-at-the-moment (TM), so I
> haven't checked the status of the package system. However, most of the
> functionality should be implemented (I can't think of what's missing).
> It is not entirely platform independent, but I only think minor changes
> need to be made. I also believe that most of the platform dependent code
> is factored out in seperate function that does fairly simple things. So,
> I'm guessing that platform issues should be minor.

I suppose the minimum needed to proceed are example packages. Are the
ones on your home page still ok with the package manager in octave? If
so cross platform compatibility can be tested easily enough..

D.