Merging Octave and Octave-Forge?

[David Bateman]

Jonathan Stickel wrote:
> On 8/27/08 octave-maintainers-request at octave.org wrote:
>> From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo.che.wisc.edu>
>> Subject: Re: Merging Octave and Octave-Forge?
>> To: Thomas Weber <thomas.weber.mail at gmail.com>
>> Cc: octave-maintainers at octave.org
>> Message-ID: <18613.30127.188620.824120 at segfault.lan>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>>
>> On 27-Aug-2008, Thomas Weber wrote:
>>
>> | If you don't want that behaviour, don't install the package. The
>> | package's documentation is totally clear about the package's effects.
>>
>> | but if people install stuff blindly, the only sensible
> 
> I have been following this discussion with some interest.  I think part 
> of the problem is that users are used to installing all of the 
> octave-forge packages or non at all.  Historically, octave-forge was a 
> monolithic add-on.  The shift to individual packages was a fantastic 
> idea and was fairly well implemented.  However, it seems that users 
> still want to install what is now called the octave-forge "bundle" 
> rather than individual packages, and this is made worse by the various 
> distribution options (windows installer, fink on mac, various linux 
> distributions, etc.).
> 
> I am not sure about a solution.  I am tempted to suggest that the 
> mainteners stop providing a bundled download option, but I think that 
> would annoy a lot of users.  Perhaps a better solution is to somehow 
> make all the packages "unloaded" by default when installed from the bundle.
> 

The ones that cause the problem with shadowed functions all are marked 
as unloaded, and in fact that is one of the reasons for the installed 
but unloaded state of packages being available at all (together with the 
possibility of multiple translations of the octave online help eg FR-fr 
and FR-ca for example :-) )

D.