User:Carandraug/Porting for Octave

I wrote this page to explain what I mean if I'm trying to port one of the many toolbox for Matlab out there released under a free license. I'd like to avoid have to fork someone's project to make it work in Octave. I'd much rather make it work in both systems. However, I'm aware that most developers of such toolboxes would like to.

This is my main idea of how a port is the following:

• require no patch to prepare an Octave release;
• any change required made upstream;
• simply have a script that creates an Octave package from the repository, creating any file required by pkg.

More text

• Why are you asking me to have my code in a public repository? I already have a tarball (or zip file, or whatever) on my website.

To make it easier for collaborative development.

• Why would I accept any changes you send me? It's already working in Matlab.

So that your code can also work in Octave. While Octave should accept all the Matlab syntax, some functions are still missing. However, more often than not, these can be easily replaced by code that works in both. Everyone wins.

• But I don't care about Octave, I want my code to run in Matlab.

I am not trying to make your code work in Octave only. I'm trying to make it work in Octave as well. I'm trying to remove some of its features, I'm just trying to make it more useful for more people. The fact that you choose a free license and put the code out there means that you want it to be useful for others.

• Why are you doing this?

Because I want it to run in Octave painless for Octave users. Either because I'm using it on my own studies, I have friend that needs it, or just because it looks interesting to play with.