Re: Octave distribution (was: Re: Octave advocacy)

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 10:16:59AM -0700, Jonathan Stickel wrote:
> Open source is a lot about choice, but there is a price to pay for that. 
>  With Octave there are many choices: which blas/atlas package to use, 
> hdf5 support, whether to install octave-forge, and others I don't know. 
>  With octave-forge there are more choices:  GiNaC support, Qhull 
> support, additional plotting packages, and others.
>
> To truly choose for yourself, you must compile from source.  If you 

You can always select a superset package and then opt not to use certain
features.  For what it's worth, Debian has all of the above.

> don't want to compile from source, you are at the mercy of those who 
> will compile for you!  Usually binary packages come with less rather 
> than more since the more you include, the more library dependencies must 
> be solved.

Counter-example provided by Debian. 'apt-get install octave-forge' just works,

> Just my 2 cents.  BTW: this is why I use Gentoo for my Linux Distro.

Yes, choice is good. 

But as a Debian user, I am glad so many packages are just an 'apt-get
install' command away.  As a Debian maintainer, I try to make that choice
available to others via the packages I look after.  Now, as for choice, I
think these aren't even available in other distros:

octave-ci - Contributed functions for the GNU Octave language
octave-epstk - GNU Octave encapsulated postscript toolkit
octave-gpc - Octave bindings for the General Polygon Clipper Library
octave-matcompat - Empty transition package for octave-forge
octave-plplot - Octave support for PLplot, a plotting library
octave-sp - Semidefinite Programming functions for GNU Octave
octave-statdataml - GNU Octave package for XML-based data exchange
matwrap - A wrapper generator for matrix languages

These are also part of the bootable Quantian dvd, see the webpages at
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.

Best regards,  Dirk

-- 
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
                                                -- Groucho Marx



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