Re: [Octave Forge] Octave 4.0 call for packages

[Philip Nienhuis]

Mike Miller-4 wrote
> Dear Octave Forge maintainers,
> 
> The first 4.0 release candidate has been out for some time now and we
> don't expect any further changes to impact Octave Forge package
> compatibility. At this time we would like to call for Octave Forge
> package maintainers to release updated versions of packages if needed
> that will build and work with the coming Octave release.
> 
> For informational purposes, the current released versions of the
> following packages fail to build properly with the first release
> candidate:
> 
>  * communications
>  * control
>  * dicom
>  * image
>  * odepkg
>  * windows

Not being able to be built is one thing; but some packages are wholly or
partly incompatible or will break things if installed in a too new Octave
release. As a result user code may fail without any clue that an old OF
package is the cause.

E.g., general-1.3.4 overloads inputParser with outdated code. One
consequence is that some OF linear-algebra functions won't work properly if
general-1.3.4 is loaded.
Another PITA is the java package; we've had recurrent questions in the help
ML from users trying to install it in 3.8.2+
specfun still overloads erfcinv(), expint() and ellipj().

I sometimes think it may be a good thing to renew some existing OF package
releases with the only change being a maximum Octave version check, so that
unwary users at least have a warning that the package is incompatible with
the Octave version at hand.

Philip




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