Developing Octave-Forge packages

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

Hi, I started working on Debian bug #607071 yesterday:

     http://bugs.debian.org/607071

And I'm just looking on advice on how to do this. I am not even sure
how to setup a development environment. If I need to make frequent
changes to the C++ sources, thus recompile them and test them
frequently, how do I do this? I notice that that Makefile included
with the package does something weird about disabling the compilation
environment once it's been built once. Why? I've got an svn checkout
in addition to the distributed tarball, but I'm at a loss as to how
people ordinarily develop these packages, or compile in debug symbols.

Thanks,
- Jordi G. H.