Re: java package

[Robert T. Short]

On 05/09/2012 01:10 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> Could I propose an alternative to making Java part of core? The
> problem is that installing packages from Octave Forge is a pain in the
> neck, right? So can't we fix that instead? We all mostly agree that
> there is a problem with the separation of Octave and Octave Forge, so
> if we bring them close together enough to the point where it's mostly
> painless to install, maintain, and develop packages, in a single
> unified way, can't we work on that instead?
>
> I am very much not happy with the idea of making Java part of my
> regular Octave builds of which I do many per day, nor all of the cruft
> that comes with Java, and if I can avoid reading Java code, I would
> much prefer so. So for people like me who don't want to touch Java,
> can't we modularise and keep it modular?
>
> - Jordi G. H.
This makes more sense to me as well.  Even the --without-java thing 
requires an extra step during configuration, probably causes some tests 
to fail, and is ugly in general.

I am totally with Jordi in terms of closing the gap between forge and 
the core.  Since the forge guys don't seem to want to do this, maybe we 
just steal appropriate forge code and create a set of 'core' packages 
that are maintained in mercurial and are supported as integral parts of 
octave but are actually packages.  It even makes sense to me that some 
of the stuff that is actually in the core would be better served as 
supported packages.

I would even help with doing this.

Bob