Hi, On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Sébastien Villemot <sebast...@debian.org>wrote:
> The attached patch allows the package to install nicely even if MATLAB > is not present. Otherwise people who install the package by accident end > up with a dpkg error. > > Julian: please confirm that it fixes the issue for you. > I see the problem, but I am not convinced this change is the solution. Installing this package is pointless without Matlab, it should not be pulled in as a dependency unless a package gets installed that requires matlab. If we make this package install successfully on a system without Matlab, we need to make any dependent package handle the situation of a missing matlab itself -- potentially multiplying the effort. At the moment, any package that depends on matlab-support can expect a functional matlab installation to be present at config time. To me the actual question is, why do people try to install this package when they do not have matlab? Consequently I see two approaches: 1) Improve the package description to avoid this kind of installations. 2) Improve the error messages. Any input for improvements is most welcome. I'd be happy to discuss this further, but at the moment I see no reason to change the current behavior. Michael -- Michael Hanke http://mih.voxindeserto.de
