Olaf Till wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think users should be enabled to choose the package version to
> download. There are packages which are to a certain degree collections
> of independent software (e.g. miscellaneous). If a function with
> stricter dependencies is added to such a package, these dependencies
> are thereby enforced for all other functions in the package. E.g I put
> 2 functions into miscellaneous which need a higher Octave version than
> the others (for 1 function, for which there is a corresponding recent
> bug report in savannah, this can be easily mended, but not for the
> other function). But upgrading Octave is not necessarily feasible for
> everyone. So one might break something by adding new functions. There
> would be no problem with this if the users could be told that in such
> cases they can always download an older package version, which lacks
> the new functionality, but does what they need it for (miscellaneous
> e.g may be needed for various reasons by many different packages).
>
> With
>
> http://downloads.sourceforge.net/octave/<package>-<version>.tar.gz?download
>
> one seemingly can access older packages. But I think this should be
> advertized to the users somewhere on the OF webpage. It's still not
> ideal, since the existing package versions have to be guessed (some
> packages are even not numbered continuously). A possibility to list
> existing versions would be better; just a plain directory for each
> package, exported over ftp or http, containing all package versions.
Another issue is that some octave-forge functions have moved into core.
Older octave versions + newer octave-forge packages may lack
functionality then.
But conversely, newer octave core function versions may be shadowed by
corresponding older octave-forge functions. So, apart from minimal
octave versions, do we need to specify maximum octave versions, too? Or
some mechanism to detect & disable OF functions that shadow core octave
functions?
Back to Olaf's posting proper:
In the packages tab, after selecting a package & clicking "Details"
there's a link to "(Older versions)". So the "advertisement" Olaf
mentions does exist.
Clicking it, clicking "Octave Forge Packages" & clicking "Individual
package releases" on the next pages, leads to a page with package
versions, including older individual package versions.
(OK, one needs to wait for the list being fully populated and then click
"Name" to get an alphabetically sorted list.)
Perusing this list I get the impression that only a limited number of
older package versions are mentioned; e.g., I see no trace of java-1.2.6
or io-1.0.9
As to the miscellaneous pkg, I only see miscellaneous-1.0.10.tar.gz
Admittedly accessing older package versions could be made more
transparent; e.g., a direct link from package "details"/"older versions"
to the last mentioned page ("Individual Package Releases") would surely
help unwary users to avoid loosing track on the two intermediate pages.
Hopefully this can be implemented easily.
Philip
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special Offer-- Download ArcSight Logger for FREE (a $49 USD value)!
Finally, a world-class log management solution at an even better price-free!
Download using promo code Free_Logger_4_Dev2Dev. Offer expires
February 28th, so secure your free ArcSight Logger TODAY!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/arcsight-sfd2d
_______________________________________________
Octave-dev mailing list
Octave-dev@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/octave-dev
