Online Developer Meeting (2022-01-25)

• Date: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 @ 18:00 UTC
• Location: https://meet.jit.si/octave-dev-2022-05-25

Todays topics

• Meet and greet 5 minutes before meeting (audio testing).

Release process of Octave 7.1

• Blocking issues: 9 bugs targeting 7.0.90 (see Savannah overview on octave.space)
• Most important ones (in no particular order):
  • bug #61788: arrays of type int16 contain wrong numbers
  • bug #61813: memory management bug when calling MEX that returns an output
  • bug #61821: segfault using tree_parameter_list in oct file
  • bug #61898: subsref: Error when field syntax is used on non-scalar @class object
  • maybe also: malloc-delete[] combination in the .mex interface
• A few package releases with fixes for Octave 7 were pushed to mxe default, e.g. https://hg.octave.org/mxe-octave/rev/d601436d29f2 (ga, control, communications)
  • Should those changes be applied to the "release" branch?
• Revisit load path caching: https://octave.discourse.group/t/rfc-remove-faulty-load-path-caching/2136

C++17 features in Octave API?

• Timeframe?
• Should we announce that possible requirement for some time in the future with the release of Octave 7?
• See also: Should Octave switch to C++17? If so, when? on Discourse.

Previous topics

The following items were not discussed. Just some links to progress on those items are displayed.

Release process of Octave 7.1

• No blocking issues at the moment.
  • Visibility flags are disabled (on the stable branch).
  • Polymorphic allocators are disabled by default, but can be enabled with a configure switch.
• Translations are still ongoing.
• Update year in copyright notes.
• Do a first release candidate during the next few days (independent on current status of translations).

Projects for Octave 8

• Array<T> template class:
  • Allow implicit instantiations
  • Less explicit instantiations (where possible)
    • Background: Current design of requiring explicit instantiations was probably "just" for optimization of compile time.
  • Make sorting a part of the Array<T> template (instead of a separate template).
    • Background: At the time, this was first implemented, there was (probably?) no good sorting method in the STL.
    • Maybe move to C++ sorting methods now if possible.
  • provide STL compatible iterators (might be a requirement for STL sorting)
  • generally try to take better advantage of templating and specializations.

• Make it explicit in the docstring if functions have a return argument.
• Allow @seealso links to point to old class functions - like @ftp/open. (Doesn't work currently in doc cache.)
• Lookup classdef methods for help and debugger.
• Check reason for "disappearing" classdef constructor for MException class: bug #40828
• Is it possible to simplify the implementation of classdef in Octave core?

• General note on changes: Don't over-complicate code for micro-optimizations. Use STL where possible and where it makes sense.

Update strategy for MXE Octave

• default branch was merged to release a couple of weeks ago. That was meant to get the CI working after the merge from default to stable in the main Octave repository. It was not meant to freeze the branch...
• When should the "actual" merge happen? For the (first?) release candidate? For the final release?
  • Merge some time during the next few days. Before the first release candidate.
  • After that, fix bugs as necessary.

Status of plotting in Octave

• https://octave.discourse.group/t/plotting-backend-for-web-ui/2008
  • The "gnuplot" graphics interface will eventually be removed.
  • It's probably difficult (or impossible) to make it a package.
  • The "qt" graphics interface is the default now.

See also

• Next meeting: Online Developer Meeting (2022-02-22)
• Last meeting: Online Developer Meeting (2021-12-28)