octave-<packagename> @ all! Broken links to Octave forge site need to be replaced with links to the new Octave packages site

[acp29 (Andrew Penn)]

Hi there,

I am a maintainer and developer at GNU Octave. I have noticed that (I think) all of the packages on MacPorts for GNU Octave have hyperlinks to the abandoned Octave Forge site. The new website for Octave packages (including those that were on Octave Forge is now ​https://gnu-octave.github.io/packages/. The transition from Sourceforge to GitHub has led to a boom in the contribution of new packages and the development of existing packages. While the Octave forge site still exists and links for some old packages may still work, these same packages now exist on the GitHub Octave Packages site, as do all newer Octave packages.

An example to illustrate the broken links, the new statistics-resampling package at ​https://ports.macports.org/port/octave-statistics-resampling/. I have attached a screenshot with the broken hyperlink circled. The broken/outdated link is ​https://octave.sourceforge.io/statistics-resampling/. The link should read: ​https://gnu-octave.github.io/packages/statistics-resampling/. In other words, all of the octave-<packagename> ports should have follow the following address structure: ​https://gnu-octave.github.io/packages/<packagename>

Sorry if this ticket isn't exactly in the format you'd like. Your ticket guidelines look great for getting the specific info you need to address problems with specific ports but this is a very general issue which addresses many ports and is not about the build of the ports.

Kind regards

Andrew Penn

[acp29 (Andrew Penn)]

Screenshot with broken/outdated link circled

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Congrats on moving to GitHub! I think it improved contributions to MacPorts when we moved as well.

Thanks for letting us know about the problem. Marius, since you maintain all of the maintained octave module ports, could you have a look at this?

[Schamschula (Marius Schamschula)]

Quite a number of Octave packages have already made the move for the source code! The package in question is a hybrid that pulls the source code from GitHub while still pointing to the old home SourceForge page.

However, until recently a number of packages still pointed to SourceForge, hence I fixed things on a one by one basis.

I will have to see if I can call the github Port Group from within the octave Port Group to make this easier in the future.

[Schamschula (Marius Schamschula)]

The problem is that it is not safe to assume that all packages are under ttps://github.com/gnu-octave/${octave.module}/.

E.g. octave-pool which is under https://github.com/reprostat/octave-pool.

Hence, I'm going to have to continue to use a hybrid approach, or fundamentally change the octave Port Group.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

While you're looking at this, please also think about the fact that of the 24 octave module ports that are getting their distfiles from GitHub, only 5 are using release downloads while the remaining 19 are using the legacy download URL. The legacy download URL is deprecated; switch to archive URLs, please (github.tarball_from archive). This will change checksums, so make that change coinciding with a version update, or treat it as a stealth update.

[Schamschula (Marius Schamschula)]

Yes! I was already planning to make use of stealth updates for those packages that were still being pulled from SourceForge.

I'll add github.tarball_from archive to the octave 1.0 PG.

[Schamschula (Marius Schamschula)]

Unfortunately, as I'm updating the Portfiles, I've run into packages that still are @ SourceForge:

bsltl ​https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/bsltl/ci/master/tree/

cgi ​https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/cgi/ci/master/tree/

communications ​https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/communications/ci/default/tree/

data-smoothing ​https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/data-smoothing/ci/default/tree/

dataframe ​https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/dataframe/ci/default/tree/

dicom ​https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/dicom/ci/default/tree/

divand ​https://gnu-octave.github.io/packages/divand/

fpl ​https://gnu-octave.github.io/packages/fpl/

optim ​https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/optim/ci/default/tree/

signal ​https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/signal/ci/default/tree/

splines ​https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/splines/ci/default/tree/

struct ​https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/struct/ci/default/tree/

and many others!

I'll have to manually set them up. I have no plans to have both GH and SF support in the octave PG.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Replying to Schamschula:

I'll add github.tarball_from archive to the octave 1.0 PG.

If you do that, just make sure that any existing ports that were fetching from github set github.tarball_from. If they don't, and were relying on the previous default value of tarball, it will cause checksum mismatches. If you're not ready to switch those existing ports, you can add github.tarball_from tarball to them so they won't break.

[Marius Schamschula <mschamschula@…>]

In b0e9a0032068c55f8668de4e274ec9ffb3cee775/macports-ports (master):

octave-doc: update to 0.5.3, add homepage

See: #69210

[Marius Schamschula <mschamschula@…>]

In 4140121aa1ae4c591fdb2299630dfab224a8126e/macports-ports (master):

octave packages: add homepages

See: #69210

[Schamschula (Marius Schamschula)]

This is a temporary workaround! I'm still working on a permanent solution.

[Marius Schamschula <mschamschula@…>]

In 5356ed1a6d5b3352b36e67445cecd179317879a3/macports-ports (master):

octave-1.0.tcl: add support for bitbucket, github and gitlab repos

This is backwards compatible and also supports sourceforge
packages while linking to their new homepages on github
Closes: #69210