Naming Scheme for MacPorts Octave versions

[Michael Dickens]

On Dec 13, 2011, at 9:21 AM, Lukas Reichlin wrote:

  Octave already does compatibility checks upon package
  installation. It uses the info from the package's DESCRIPTION
  file. MacPorts' octave packages are mostly outdated and don't
  work with octave 3.4. The recent versions from OctaveForge all
  support octave 3.4. Some may have become redundant. Some of
  these newer packages don't work with the old octave 3.2, but
  that should not be a problem.
  I agree with Michael that the easiest thing would be upgrading
  "octave" to 3.4.3 and just drop 3.2. After that, we can
  upgrade the packages.

If what you say about MacPorts' Octave packages is true -- that
they are mostly outdated and don't work with 3.4 (meaning: they
work with just 3.2, the current "octave" port) -- then I think
bumping the "octave" port from 3.2 to 3.4 will be a -lot- of work
because it will require updating most (the vast majority?) of the
octave packages as well.  We cannot have one without the other.
Right now, there are some 65+ octave packages that would need to
be checked over & likely updated.

Moving "octave" to "octave-legacy" (etc, as already suggested)
would work (including changing all of the current octave packages
to use the newly named port -- a small endeavor compared with the
upgrade to 3.4 compatibility, most likely), but I don't see that
it gets us very much.

I know that I don't have the time right now to do this.  Given
that "octave" has "nomaintainer", and I only occasionally work
with "octave-devel", and unless someone else (Lukas?, Takeshi?)
is willing to step forward to do all of this work, I don't see it
happening anytime soon.  Maybe it would make a good "relatively
simple and nothing special" Google Summer of Code for 2012?  Or,
maybe not since that's not really the purpose of GSoC IME.

- MLD
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