Developer FAQ

How can I get involved in Octave development?

• Be around. Be social.

  Participate in our Discourse Forum. Find things about Octave you don't like, and start thinking about how to fix them. Please do not just send a message listing your skills and offering to help.

  Many people who now contribute to Octave first spent some time observing the community communication before they started to delve into the code. A good way to learn Octave is to understand the problems other people are having with it, so being helpful in Discourse not only helps Octave as a whole, but it also prepares you to become a better Octave contributor.

• Kill the bugs.

  Accurate bug reporting is also very useful. Find and report bugs, making an attempt to diagnose them. Eventually, you will also know how to fix them. If you want to help with bug reports or patches, subscribe to the bug tracker mailing list. You'll get updates on all bug activity, and you can jump in when you see something you can help with.

• Getting hands dirty.

  See #How can I contribute code to Octave? below. We lack volunteers and we do need your help, but because of that, we also lack the time to provide good guidance and mentoring. If there is a specific short-term project you would like to work on, say so, and just do it. Then ask for help or advice when you're doing it. It is a lot more important that you do something that you're actually interested on than something we suggested because it only matches your skills.

• Octave needs more documentation.

  If you like documenting software or have great ideas for Octave, please get in contact with us. Additionally, see Project - Documentation for details.

• Need inspiration?

  Look at our projects, short projects, and Summer of Code - Getting Started if you need specific inspiration for coding tasks that we would like to get done.

How can I contribute code to Octave?

In general you can contribute code to Octave in form of patches (changesets). Those have to be uploaded to the bug or patch tracker.

• In Building is described, how you get and build the latest Octave source code on your system.
• In Mercurial we describe, how you create a patch (changeset) from your modifications.
• Our Contribution guidelines should be read and followed as well, to ensure acceptance of your contribution.

How can I find which source file implements a given command?

Use Octave's which command.

m-file functions

>> which help

 'help' is a function from the file /some/path/m/help/help.m

In this case, the desired function is a m-file, one can simply edit it inside the GUI, just type:

>> edit help

built-in functions

Some functions are already compiled (a.k.a. built-in functions), for example:

>> which addpath

 'addpath' is a built-in function from the file libinterp/corefcn/load-path.cc

This function is to be found in Octave's source code, in this case at libinterp/corefcn/load-path.cc. Open the respective file with an editor of your choice and search for the pattern " (addpath,".