Re: Octave odepkg

[Kai Torben Ohlhus]

On 10/28/20 7:13 PM, Carlo De Falco wrote:
>>
>> Il giorno 28 ott 2020, alle ore 07:56, Kai Torben Ohlhus 
>> <k.ohlhus@gmail.com> ha scritto:
>>
>> Greetings Carlo,
>>
>> In yesterdays developer meeting [1] the topic came up, that the odepkg
>> 0.8.5 hosted at SourceForge is still part of the MXE Octave MS Windows
>> builds.  Unfortunately, it causes a failure when testing/using the
>> package [2].
>>
>> Do you agree to remove the odepkg from MXE Octave, as large portions are
>> already part of Octave core?
>>
>> Another question is the latest development repository.  It used to be on
>> BitBucket [3], but they shut down Mercurial repositories, thus it is
>> unavailable.  Is there a new location available or any plans for further
>> development?
>>
>> Kai
>>
>> [1] https://wiki.octave.org/Online_Developer_Meeting_(2020-10-27)
>> [2] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?59338
>> [3] https://wiki.octave.org/Odepkg
> 
> Hi Kai,
> 
> First of all, as you noted, the significance of odepkg has changed a lot
> over time.
> 
> odepkg used to be the place to go to find (almost) matlab compatible
> ODE solvers for Octave.
> 
> Now, most matlab compatible solvers have been made much more compatible and 
> moved to core,
> so what is left in the package is mainly a collection of very specific 
> advanced methods for some niche problems.
> 
> Also the repository on SourceForge is out of date and may conflict with the 
> core functions.
> 
> So, YES, definitely the SF version of odepkg should be removed from MXE.
> And probably very few people will miss it.
> 
> That does not mean, though that  development of odepkg, will be abandoned,
> that is indeed planned, although it will require a major overhaul to simplify 
> odepkg 
> an make it more maintainable, 
> 
> I was aware bitbucket was going to phase out mercurial, but nonetheless I 
> forgot to move my stuff out of there ...
> I'll move the repo to GIT as soon as possible.
> 
> All the best,
> c.
> 
> P.S.  I also think odepkg should be removed from OctaveForge alltogether, 
> pkg-index is a much more suitable place to distribute it from
> 


Thanks for the detailed response.

Recently, I am involved into Octave Forge, too.  If you like to share
some of your opinions, I started a topic on Discourse [4].

Until there is a "new stable home" for the odepkg development, I favor
to leave the Octave Forge repository of the old odepkg untouched.  Is
this okay with you?

Kai

[4]
https://octave.discourse.group/t/online-developer-meeting-2020-11-10-the-future-of-octave-packages/349