Bug#336267: [Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#336267: octave-forge: Extra packages not installed ?

[Paul Kienzle <pkienzle@users.sf.net>]

On Oct 29, 2005, at 1:18 PM, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:

> * Balbir Thomas <thomas.1037@osu.edu> [2005-10-28 21:58]:
>
> > The extra packages of octave-forge are not installed . I
> > was in particular looking for tk_octave. I couldn't find
> > a note in /usr/share/doc/octave-forge explaining why the
> > package maintainer decided to drop the extra packages.
> >
> > Kindly include extra packages ( that are "free" ) and
> > put a note in the debian README file for octave-forge,
> > listing the packages being dropped for whatever reason.
> > Hopefully you would agree the only pertinent reasons may
> > be violation of DFSG or some sought of dependency problem.
>
> I think you are right, but I do not know exactly what to answer.  The
> octave-forge package is being currently maintained in a collective
> project hosted at Alioth (The Debian Octave Group,
> http://pkg-octave.alioth.debian.org).  I do not know if any of the DOC
> members can explain why tk_octave (and other components) is not 
> included
> in the package.  Perhaps Dirk can enlighten us on the issue.

I stopped installing tk_octave because at the time it
required that octave itself be compiled with threads
otherwise octave segfaulted with a complaint about X11.
This may not be the case on recent versions of Debian.

tk_octave also has race conditions when accessing
octave matrices.  There is no lock around the code
to decrement and test the reference counter, and it
may be that one thread deletes memory after another
thread grabs its pointer.

soctcl is a tcl package which calls octave through a
socket.  It isn't installed because I didn't bother
figuring out how to properly install tcl scripts.  Both
it and the perl package could be installed by an
ambitious dog.

- Paul