[Pkg-octave-devel] Abandoning statdataml and releated packages

[Rafael Laboissiere]

Some time ago I packaged StatDataML (http://www.omegahat.org/StatDataML/)
for Debian hoping that it would be a solution for communicating data
between Octave and R.  The current version of the statdataml package
(1.0.9) still has me as maintainer, although I already put the sources in
the SVN repository of the DOG.

In the meanwhile, I started using exclusively HDF5 for transferring data
between Octave and R and I think this is a superior approach, not to
mention the fact that I am now also able to use Perl to read/write the
data files.

The statdataml source package generates two binary packages:
octave-statdataml and r-cran-statdataml.  This last one depends on
r-cran-xml, which I also packaged for Debian.

Now, the scoops: 

1) Both r-cran-statdataml and r-cran-xml have been made available by the
   Debian BioCondutor Group (http://pkg-bioc.alioth.debian.org/).  BTW,
   the versions present in their apt-getable repository
   (http://public.pzr.uni-rostock.de/~moeller/mirror/) are more recent
   than those packaged by me.

2) The newest upstream version of StatDataML 1.0-10
   (http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Descriptions/StatDataML.html)
   even does not contain the Octave part which was present in 1.0-9.

3) The Octave part of StatDataML 1.0-9 even does work correctly with g++
   4.0.  I do not know whether the problems comes really from octave
   2.1.71, from libxml2 in sid, from the compiler, or from a combination
   of all those.  I do not have the time/interest in debugging this
   problem.
   
4) A bug report has been recently filed against r-cran-xml
   (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=330622).  This is an
   upstream problem and I even do not know whether the most recent
   upstream version of the fixes it.  (Again, my time/interest on this is
   very scarce).

Under all this circumstances, I am strongly inclined to abandon the
StatDataML packages in Debian.  I may just orphan them or simply file a
bug report against ftp.debian.org requesting their exclusion from the
archive.  I would do the same with r-cran-xml and point the users to the
Debian-BioC archive.

Of course, I will discuss this in debian-devel before taking any action,
but I would like to know your opinion before.

-- 
Rafael