Re: Upgrade Ubuntu Jaunty to Karmic (9.04 to 9.10) breaks self-compiled octave

[Thomas Weber]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 11:20:12AM -0600, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> 2009/10/30 Uwe Dippel <address@hidden>:
> > Though it would be great to have a transitional package.
> > I wonder if there is a good reason to name it octave2.9 / octave3.0 /
> > octave3.2 instead of maybe just octave? So that it gets updated
> > automatically?
> 
> I can't remember the exact reason for it, but roughly, I believe it
> has to do with other packages dependent on Octave and of course, on
> specific versions of Octave.
> 
> Rafael Laboissiere and his heir apparent Thomas Weber had very good
> reasons for keeping the version name in the package name, so perhaps
> one of them can provide an explanation.

Off the top of my head (and maybe mixing some version numbers in the
2.0/2.1 case).

When 2.0 was stable, it was so for a really long time. Most users
actually used the 2.1 version. So, both were introduced into Debian
(I think this was actually done by Dirk Eddelbuettel, but it happened 
before I got involved in Debian, so maybe it was someone else).

2.1 vs. 2.9/3.0: There were some big changes, breaking other people's
software. I don't remember what exactly, but I submitted at least one
patch to another maintainer to get his package working on the new 3.0
stuff.

Ultimately, we are talking about Octave as a library and an interpreter,
not as a standalone software.
If a new release isn't 100% backwards compatible, you somehow need to
give people a way to migrate their scripts to the new version. That
means they need the old release in ordr to work and the new release for
porting their stuff.

        Thomas