Scilab 2.7

orzetto · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2003 10:31 pm Post subject: Scilab 2.7

Hi everybody,
sorry if this is the wrong group to post this in.

I see from emerge -p scilab that the only supported version for Scilab in portage (portage/app-sci) is still 2.6.

Scilab 2.7 was released about 2 weeks ago, and since it's mathematics software I'd like to have it properly compiled and optimised instead of getting a binary. Ok, I'm being overfussy, but performance is performance! The source code is available at the usual site http://www.scilab.org.
The new version has especially a much better help-on-line system, much improved over last version, and that is now likely to be better than Matlab's.

For those who should not know, Scilab is a mathematical tool practically identical to MatLab, only it's open source and free as both freedom and beer, developed by my neighbours the surrendering cheese-eating monkeys the French. Bless state-financed research!
And, it has a couple of features that work better.

Bye,
-Federico
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aja · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2003 10:47 pm Post subject:

I don't know specifically, but this may be because the portage tree is currently locked to new package (not sure if new slots for existing packages is included in that). This is in preparation for gentoo 1.4 (dear God, let it be soon), after which we should see a pile of new stuff appear (that happened when 1.2 was finally released - the logjam in portage suddenly cleared).

I believe they may briefly unfreeze (slush?) the tree after the next release candidate. The issue could also be that the developer who handles that package is busy on other things (that perhaps more people are clamouring for), and may not get to it for a while. You could try posting to bugs.gentoo.org

Finally, a quick peek at the ebuild for scilab-2.6.ebuild shows a fairly short not-too-complicated script. If you're feeling adventurous, you might want to take a stab at editting it (changing, for example, the source downloads and other calls to match what is presented in the 2.7 install docs) to see if you can get a clean compile with the new sources. That would depend on how radical the shift from 2.6 to 2.7 was. {Warning - probably not a good idea to try this on a production machine the first time}.

orzetto · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2003 12:42 am Post subject:

Thanks for the info, I will wait then.
I'm just not accustomed to the procedures, so if there is actually a maintainer for the package, I can well understand they are pretty busy right now.
Ok, will still use the binaries for the time being (no real wish to be adventurous for the time being).

Cheers,
-Federico
_________________
Why is everybody always generalising?