Re: Upgrade Ubuntu Jaunty to Karmic (9.04 to 9.10) breaks self-compiled octave

[Uwe Dippel]

Thomas Weber wrote:
> Off the top of my head (and maybe mixing some version numbers in the
> 2.0/2.1 case).
>
> When 2.0 was stable, it was so for a really long time. Most users
> actually used the 2.1 version. So, both were introduced into Debian
> (I think this was actually done by Dirk Eddelbuettel, but it happened 
> before I got involved in Debian, so maybe it was someone else).
>
> 2.1 vs. 2.9/3.0: There were some big changes, breaking other people's
> software. I don't remember what exactly, but I submitted at least one
> patch to another maintainer to get his package working on the new 3.0
> stuff.
>
> Ultimately, we are talking about Octave as a library and an interpreter,
> not as a standalone software.
> If a new release isn't 100% backwards compatible, you somehow need to
> give people a way to migrate their scripts to the new version. That
> means they need the old release in ordr to work and the new release for
> porting their stuff.
>   

Dear Thomas,

appreciate your explanation very much. I thought so, since Eidors was 
broken with 3.0. Unfortunately, 2.X was not available under Jaunty, and 
some list members suggested to compile 3.2.2 myself. (Which was quite a 
hassle, but finally done with some very helpful people on this list.) 
The whole thing broke again, with the update of Jaunty to Karmic.

Maybe I should say a few words about my background and motivation: being 
a FOSS-person for > 10 years, I was looking to replace expensive/pirated 
Matlab stuff in my workplace (students can easily buy Matlab for around 
US$1 in various markets). We were doing EIT-research, using Eidors. Our 
data, alas, cannot be shown on octave, subsequent to the transition 
2.X->3.X of octave, because it broke Eidors compatibility; so we are 
stuck with Matlab. With students' work, I was trying to get some 
first-year second-semester students to use octave for their basic Bode 
plots, but the instructions on the web, for Matlab, don't work neither. 
With the usually utmost helpful people on this list, another syntax made 
those plots work, but with the title printed in the center instead of at 
the top. And still, the Bode plot comes with warnings, despite of using 
the suggested syntax.
Add together with my hours (now rather days) just for installing, I'm 
not really impressed. Though I tried very hard to be impressed. For next 
Friday, I am invited to show the potential replacement of proprietary 
research tools (SPSS, Matlab) with FOSS tools in the MyGOSSCon 2009 
(Malaysian Government Open Source Conference). What should/could I say 
without lying? Oh, yes, qtocatve is incompatible with 3.2.2.
Also in this respect, your sentence

Ultimately, we are talking about Octave as a library and an interpreter,
not as a standalone software.

confuses me. Does that mean octave does not want to be a competitor to 
Matlab?
I really don't know what to say at MyGOSSCon. As of now, I can only 
summarise, that I couldn't find fault with R as a full replacement of 
the functionality of SPSS (nevermind GUI), function; while octave - 
sorry, only to my own personal experiences in the last few months, and 
not wanting to hurt anyone - looks more like alpha. At least, seen from 
the perspective of someone who intends to replace it for Matlab in 
teaching and research.
(And, from the point of view of a FOSS-developer, a software that seems 
to have seen some wrong decisions. But that's not what I feel like 
discussing here. Terms like backward compatibility and Matlab 
compatibility would need addressing before I could full-heartedly 
recommend its use.)

Uwe