Aw: The octave-unstable PPA

[Stefan Mahr]

> You are now distributing an alpha release as if it were stable. Ubuntu
> users don't typically learn to discriminate about the stability of
> their packaging sources. They are conditioned to believe that
> "unstable" means "Debian unstable" which means "current" which means
> "the best".

That's your very own opinion. People which dig around to find this PPA should 
be able to understand what stable or unstable means in the case of octave.


> I don't know what the
> download statistics are like, but I am uncomfortable with Octave's
> reputation being tarnished by the wide release of an alpha release
> (it's obtained from alpha.gnu.org, after all).
...
> Is it possible to make this PPA private or less prominent?

Around 20 downloads per version. I would not call it very prominent.


> The packaging is now diverging from the Debian Octave Group's own
> packaging, and correct me if I'm wrong, the new packaging isn't even
> under version control. Or did you guys start by cloning this repo?
> 
>     http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-octave/octave.git;a=summary

Of course it is diverging, because there is no debian package with octave alpha 
release. You're right, it would be the better way to use version control, but 
at the moment it doesn't worth the effort for me. Also, I don't think the 
debian maintainers will care a lot what's going on at launchpad.


> Will people on various Ubuntu architectures not face
> problems with this packaging breaking their Octave-Forge packages?

It's a unstable package build from a alpha release. Why the packaging should be 
better than octave itself? :) 


> Is the quality of this packaging good? Are you making sure you follow
> Debian policy?
> Are you pushing your changes back to Debian?

It doesn't make much sense to follow the complete debian policy for this kind 
of development preview. Since debian doesn't distribute alpha releases there is 
nothing to contribute yet. When 3.7.x reaches release candidate state and 
debian grabs it, we could contribute of course.

Also, did you ever looked to the debian patch directory? There is at least one 
patch that could be integrated to octave since years.

 
> While I applaud the enthusiasm of following Octave development

You should really work on your motivation technique. ;-)


Stefan