[gentoo-soc] project: octave-forge repository for paludis

[Alex Tsui]

There is a set of octave-forge-* ebuilds in the science overlay can be
consolidated and managed by the paludis package manager. Paludis works
internally with repositories, so I want to implement an octave-forge
repository that will sync and un/install octave-forge packages. All of
octave-forge's packages are organized into four repositories,
basically folders. Also, dependency information is included in each
octave-forge package in a standard description file. This is
everything needed to write a syncer in paludis, and then we can take
advantage of paludis to do dependency resolution based on the
descriptions, saving a whole tree of ebuilds to maintain.

Most octave-forge packages depend on themselves or other octave-forge
packages, but some call for external packages. I haven't used paludis
yet, but I guess since it can be configured to do the work of portage,
portage is just another repository under paludis and so this type of
dependency can also be resolved, too.

I've started using octave for some math homework, haven't done much
matlab so would be interested to hear from people with a personal
stake in seeing octave/matlab support improved. I think the main part
of the project will be implementing the repository. Does anyone have
some extra feedback/ideas to offer?

--Alex