Re: Matlab central and octave

[David Bateman]

Søren Hauberg wrote:
> 
> John W. Eaton skrev:
>> [Discussion moved from the help list]
>> How difficult would it be to include "other"
>> packages that are not developed at the Octave Forge site in the new
>> package distribution page?  If we make that change, then perhaps there
>> should be a clearer separation between the collaborative development
>> site (Octave Forge) and the Octave package repository.  Perhaps then
>> people would begin to see Octave Forge as a collaborative development
>> site and not as the only way to make contributed code available.

It would be fairly trivial to add external packages to the build process
of the webpages, though would need some modification of the build
scripts. However, if someone sent me a package though I think I'd be
inclined to include it as is in octave-forge/{main,extra} by just
de-tarring the package. If the package format is respected that should
work fine, and I'd much rather have the source of the package under CVS
than the binary of the package itself..

>> In any case, I strongly agree with David that we need some people to
>> come forward and take on some of these kinds of tasks, otherwise it is
>> highly unlikely that anything will happen.
> I would expect that Free software exists for similar needs, so I don't
> think we would have to start from scratch. One large issue I see is
> still access to a decent server.

Something like this lives or dies on the dedication of the person
managing the system. Finding the person willing to do this is the first
step, then I say we should just accept the design choices of that person.

Regards
David