Naming Scheme for MacPorts Octave versions

[Michael Dickens]

I just use Octave in a very basic sense; I don't develop for it.
 I don't even use packages (no matter how installed).

I think for simplicity if would be great to keep just octave and
octave-devel -- move the current latter to the former, and bump
the latter to the 3.6 betas.  But, if there are packages that
folks want / need that do not work with 3.4 or newer, then that's
a potential issue that would argue for moving to octaveXY port
names.

Does anyone know if most Octave packages (whether as MacPorts
ports or not) are minimum-version compatible?

Meaning: So long as the Octave installed of the minimum version
(e.g., 3.2 or 3.4 -- this value is checked during 'configure' or
'build'), then I should be able to get the package to install in
whatever manner is correct for it to be installed ("traditional"
or "new")?

Meaning: We could create a portgroup (if not already done) that
allows each port using it to set the minimum Octave version with
which the package will work, and then auto-check this value &
error out if the new-enough version of Octave is not installed?

Or, is there a better way of doing package compatibility version
checking? - MLD
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