Code sprint: pkg.m

This page is meant to organize and report the efforts to improve pkg.m

Objectives

Allow packages to deprecate functions

• Create a system that allows packages to deprecate functions as in core. Possibilities are:
  • Get pkg to accept a deprecated directory inside the package and add it to the search path. Functions in those directories would have to be treated the same as the ones inside the core deprecated
  • PKG_ADD can be used to hack this. Package developers would still have to actually write the warnings on the function code but this would allow to have the functions in a separate directory so they don't foget to remove them on the next release
  • The package developer can also use something like Make to create a normal package from something that actually had a more complex structure, inclusive deprecated directories

Resolve packages dependencies automatically. Download and install

• Get pkg to resolve dependencies automatically by downloading and installing them too.

Make pkg.m more verbose by default

• make the package just a bit more verbose by default

Accept make flags

• make pkg able to supply extra configure and make flags, useful for distributions, including -j for make

Allow installation from given url

• Accept -url <url> to install files and packages directly from the web