Octave and Octave-Forge distribution

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 6 November 2011 10:47, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:

> When installing packages, I often run into problems resulting from
> attempting to install on a too old or too new version of Octave.  I
> don't have any good suggestions for how to avoid such problems in
> all cases.

I do. But it requires work. Keep Octave-Forge and Octave as
subrepositories of the same hg repo. This is precisely what
subrepositories are for, for handling "libraries" or "packages" and
ensuring that package A works with package B at this or that version.

You wouldn't even need to move Octave-Forge to hg if you don't want
to; hg allows subrepositories to use all popular VCSes, svn included.
So I don't think it's *too* much work to maintain. Distribution could
be somewhat problematic, since if we want people to keep installing
Octave-Forge packages separately, we have to give them some indication
of which version of the package to use with which version of Octave
(and "this package works with Octave x.x.x or later" obviously doesn't
work).

- Jordi G. H.