Re: [Help-gsl] Linear least squares, webpages and the next release

[Regis Smith]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 01:17:29PM -0600, Patrick Alken wrote:
> [...]
> 1. Is anyone out there using GSL besides me? :-)

I use it mainly for the random number generators, and sometimes for statistics
when making comparisons with R.  I've also been experimenting with Apophenia
lately, which uses GSL.   In the Debian popularity contest (a voluntary
response survey), there are 4420 installations of libgsl0-dev, and 553 are used
regularly (http://popcon.debian.org/by_inst).

Thank you for maintaining GSL!  The info manual is incredibly useful.  It is
what sold me on using GSL in the first place.

> 
> 2. What functionality would you like to see added to GSL?
> 
> 3. Are you willing to develop and contribute the features you want?

I have some amazing ideas, but alas, I have no time to write them all down :)
However, the grad student who responded earlier might be a good candidate for a
Google Summer of Code.

> 
> 4. Would you like to see a quick release of GSL v2.0, or are you content to
> work off the git repository?
> 

I use distribution-provided packages unless there is a need to do otherwise.
GNU/Linux distributions generally package the releases.  For example, a brand
new Ubuntu was released this week, and it has GSL 1.16.  So I don't think the
distributions will ever package new features from GSL's Git unless there is an
official release.

The current GSL maintainer for Debian, Dirk Eddelbuettel, is very aggressive in
keeping packages up to date.  So if you made a release today I think it would
appear in Debian very soon, and then in Debian derivatives (Ubuntu, Trisquel,
Mint, etc.) soon after.

> Thanks,
> Patrick
>