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Merging Octave and Octave-Forge?
From: |
soren |
Subject: |
Merging Octave and Octave-Forge? |
Date: |
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:27:33 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Internet Messaging Program (IMP) H3 (4.2-RC2) |
Hi,
As I've recently announced a new release of Octave-Forge has just
been made. Whenever I make these releases the same thought pops up in
my head: "why does Octave-Forge even exist?". (This line of thinking
is probably related to the fact the making the release is a painful
experience... :-) )
Here are some of my thoughts/observations about the
Octave/Octave-Forge relationship:
* The Octave-Forge web site is fairly nice, while the Octave web site
doesn't provide much information. Personally, I use the function reference
on the Octave-Forge website quite a bit, and I also find the doxygen stuff
useful. I don't see why this stuff isn't on the Octave website. However,
maintaining the Octave-Forge website is plenty of work, so I'm definitely
not volunteering for the job of also maintaining octave.org. So why not
merge the websites into one?
* The Windows binary at Octave-Forge currently is the de-facto way
of getting
Octave on Windows. I really think this binary is a great feature, and I
honestly think it should be hosted at octave.org, and be blessed as the
semi-official way of getting Octave on Windows. I don't
know/understand the
Mac situation, as it seems many people are also using Fink.
* One reason for the Octave/Octave-Forge split is that the Octave mailing
lists shouldn't be spammed with mails from people who have problems with
the Octave-Forge functions. These people should use the
Octave-Forge mailing
lists. However, this isn't really happening at the moment. Everybody just
seems to use the 'help' octave mailing list.
* I think new users are confused by the split between Octave and
Octave-Forge.
I don't think we present the boundaries between the two projects very well
to new users. I'm guessing this is simply because nobody really
knows these
boundaries...
* The Octave-Forge infrastructure (SVN, release management, servers and
bandwidth, ...) are very nice to have available. But honestly, this
infrastructure just isn't very good. Their servers are slow, and the
release process is very painful.
Anyway, this mail is getting long (sorry 'bout that) so I'll stop now.
But I'd like to ask: why are Octave and Octave-Forge two separate
projects? Why don't we simply have http://packages.octave.org as a
place for downloading add-on packages?
Søren
- Merging Octave and Octave-Forge?,
soren <=
Merging Octave and Octave-Forge?, John W. Eaton, 2008/08/26