Re: Implementation of importdata belonging to Octave Core or Octave-Forge?

[c.]

On 22 Oct 2012, at 15:01, address@hidden wrote:
> 
>> If you ask me, I think that including importdata in core so directly
>> wasn't really good. As I see it one of the roles of Octave Forge is
>> to provide a time for testing and eventually merge it into core.
> 
> Is that the intended use case for OF? My reasoning was that importdata
> is a core Matlab function, so it should be in core Octave. I didn't
> think quality went into it. We already have tons of crappy code in
> core, and we have tons of amazing code in OF.
> 
> Is the problem that you would like to work yourself on improving
> importdata but you see it as some sort of obstacle that it's in core?
> If so, we should work instead to make it easier for you and others to
> contribute to core functions. Supposedly, working with a DVCS is
> supposed to be one step towards making this less of an obstacle.

I think the problem here is rather different.

Having importdata in core requires some more work (to fix 
dependencies and coding style issues), no-one appears to be 
willing to do that at the moment except the original 
contributor who, though, needs some help and assistance.

On the other hand the function as it is is already usable
and it if it were committed to Forge or pasted on Agora it 
would be readily available to interested users (much before 
Octave 3.8 or 4.0 are out)

When some developer will have time to do the work to 
include the function and its dependencies in core, he
could then just easily pull it from forge and adapt it.

This DOES look like a typical use case for Forge and/or Agora. 

Of course if, on the other hand, you ARE willing to work on 
importdata yourself now or to assist Erik in doing so, then 
pushing to Octave was indeed a good choice.

> - Jordi G. H.
c.