octave-forge tarball format changed

[Rainer Müller]

Andrea D'Amore wrote:
> Hello,
> octave-forge portfile is pretty outdated, I got latest tarball and  
> structure has changed, main tarball hasn't a configure script  
> anymore,now it's only a collection of .tar.gz, each of them with its  
> own configure script.
> 
> What's the more convenient way to manage this?
> 
> I basically tought of:
>   a system shell cycle that will extract all tarballs and then perform  
> configure&install;

Works, but will result in a huge scripted Portfile. Each phase needs to 
be handwritten (fetching, extracting, etc.).

>   a system shell cycle that will invoke octave "pkg" command to let  
> octave manage pkg installation, with a -global option so packages will  
> be available to all users;

I don't know about this pkg command from octave. What is its purpose?

>   an octave cycle that will install each package.

I don't know what you mean by this.

> A point to be kept in mind is that packages do have dependencies and  
> I'm not sure pkg command can manage them, I tried to install  
> optimization using octave in batch mode and it failed, but Tatsuro  
> Matsuoka from octave-dev has provided me a list that should be  
> dependecy-safe.

What about splitting it up into several ports and make octave-forge 
depend on all those? This will only work as long as dependencies between 
these sub-ports can be maintained, otherwise this tends to break...

What is the release policy? Do all these parts have the same version 
number? Do they all get updated at the same time? Things you have to 
consider when splitting this into smaller ports.

Rainer