Draft: chebfun package

[cbm755]

This needs a few things, such as a tarball.

TODO list

• tarball hosted somewhere
• is ok to use id: "dev" before there is an actual release?
• check the URLs

Many thanks to @kolmanthomas, who worked on this during GSoC 2025.

---

Worth emphasizing that this requires Octave 11.

[mmuetzel]

There are package files that contain a section for development versions. E.g., the tablicious package:

packages/packages/tablicious.yaml

Lines 107 to 113 in 0a0430a

	- id: "dev"
	date:
	sha256:
	url: "https://github.com/apjanke/octave-tablicious/archive/main.tar.gz"
	depends:
	- "octave (>= 7.0.0)"
	- "pkg"

If I understand correctly, they set the .yaml file up to use the tarball that is dynamically generated by git (or GitHub?) for the head of a given branch. They left the date and the sha256 fields empty. That is probably a good idea for a "rolling version" that can change at any time.
I'd guess it would be ok to have that as the first section of versions - at least for some time. That first section is used as the default source when a user installs the package with pkg install -forge chebfun.
Once a first release is made, a new section describing that release could be added before the id: "dev" section.

[cbm755]

Thanks @mmuetzel

Our source code isn't a valid Octave package (no inst/ structure) so we can't quite use the github dynamically-generated tarball (we need to run a little script: https://github.com/gnu-octave/chebfun/blob/octave_dev/octave_pkg/make_oct_pkg.sh)

The issue tracking all this is gnu-octave/chebfun#1

Good tip about leaving sha256 blank for rolling "dev".

[cbm755]

It seems CI is unhappy with the lack of sha256:

[mmuetzel]

Hmm. That might be an issue with the CI rules...
Maybe, we could demote that into a warning if the "expected" checksum is empty...

[mmuetzel]

I opened #616 (untested) that should demote the error to a warning in the CI check if the sha256 checksum is empty.

[cbm755]

CI:

ERROR: pkg install -verbose chebfun@dev
  mkdir (/tmp/oct-JOZNat)
  untar (/tmp/oct-Eebx32/chebfun-5.7.0+.tar.gz, /tmp/oct-JOZNat)
  error: the following dependencies were unsatisfied:
     chebfun needs octave >= 11.0

This is exactly what should happen as we require Octave 11. ;-)

[cbm755]

Probably this is a bit premature; folks can test with a direct URL.

If its ok, I suggest we just leave it open as Draft: ... (but I can easily file again later too)