Re: very small packages - merge into general/miscelleneous or move into core

[Thomas Weber]

On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 03:13:50PM +0100, c. wrote:
> > the other I don't remember. The change in value I do
> > not remember - it doesn't matter however. I am not an expert in whatever
> > domain the constants are used, so I assume that every change might be
> > important to someone working in a specific domain. 
> 
> That's why I whish Debian packagers would let pkg.m work 
> so Octave users could just decide for themselves.

We share that wish. Have you a fix for 
http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?32049 ?
 
> > My thinking was more like: does it make a difference if we continue with
> > the old package - and yes, it did. So out it went. 
> 
> Let's pretend the Avogadro constant had indeed been changed.
> 
> Now the same function wth the same error is in the package "general".
> Are you packaging "general" in Debian?
> Do you think it should be kicked out because physical_constant is buggy?

There is a difference between a package that is completely buggy and a
function in a bigger package that is buggy. If there is a buggy function
in Octave, would you consider Octave useless? Probably not. If you
couldn't expect a single output from Octave to be "correct", would you
still use it?

        Thomas