Short projects

This is a collection of small projects to start contributing to Octave. Projects of long duration are listed in the Projects page.

If you never contributed to Octave before, we suggest to start with our Developer FAQ.

Review and fix existing bugs

• Review bugs that catch your interest on the Octave bug tracker on GNU Savannah.
  • A modern interface to the Octave bug tracker is given by SavannahAPI.
• Discuss with the developers there how to fix that bug or upload a patch there.
• Some bugs have already patches attached.
  • Help testing those patches.
  • Help updating outdated patches to the latest development version (this requires some Mercurial knowledge).

Implement missing Matlab functions

Use the Savannah patch tracker for submissions unrelated to an existing bug.

Write Built-In Self Tests (BISTs)

Writing BISTs improves Octave's regression testing and ensures that we don't break anything when we add new features.

• BIST for C++ functions
• BIST for m-files. See also Projects#Tests.

Work on Octave packages

• Take a look at https://gnu-octave.github.io/packages/ if you would like to work on some package there.

Easy Closes

Below is a non exhaustive list of bugs which should be looked at and appear to be easy Status (working from oldest stopped at 51317 aka items 1001-1050) Notes:

• From this range ~5% could be closed
• The last full scrub came from hardy for v4.2
• Suspect many of the plotting and java bugs could be closed.

bug	bug title	status
#32839	pkg build/install does not work with directories	OP states to close
#36954	datenum / datevec convert date-time string incorrectly during hour lost to DST	siko1056 suggests closing as won't fix
#38134	[octave forge] (signal) bug in remez	njank recommends closing
#38297	[octave forge] (signal) bilinear not compatible with Matlab	rjank suggests this is resolved
#39243	patch {x,y,z,c}data properties are not independent	hardy states original issue seems to be FIXED now
#39249	imread and 32 bit (float) TIFF images	rik5 suggested closing
#40357	OOM when converting from sparse double to sparse logical	hardy thinks this might be a DUPLICATE
#40739	Attempt to allocate (size_t)-1 bytes when trying to length-INT_MAX create sparse vector	hardy states it might well be FIXED already.
#41011	scalar indexed assignment should cast input type	appears to give same results as ML
#41661	[octave forge] (generate_html) generate_package_html page header contains wrong links	cdf (OP) asks this item still relevant
#42118	COW memory issues when extracting small slices from large arrays	rik5 isn't worth the maintenance burden
#42282	overloaded vertcat fails if some rows contain only built-in types	cmb suggests this is a DUPLICATE
#42421	"find" function overflows for large sparse matrices	appears issue is resolved
#43327	dir function is too slow	siko1056 suggests to close as won't fix.
#43717	rats LEN Matlab incompatibility	riks states wouldn't bother to fix this as Octave's solution seems better.
#44130	[octave forge] (statistics) mvncdf outputs different results for same input parameters	mangosauce35 states not a bug but a matter of precision
#44971	[octave forge] (generate_html) fails to generate "See also" hyperlinks	jbect questions if it is a DUPLICATE
#45166	[octave forge] (communications) typos in function docstrings	appears can be closed
#45390	[octave forge] (communications) finddelay function	appears can be closed
#45404	Breakpoints cannot be set in classdef methods or +package function files	jwe suggest closing this
#45650	[octave forge] (communications) 'fmmod.m' help does not mention its last parameter (freqdev)	appears can be closed
#45944	eig(X,'nobalance') does not exist in Octave vs. Matlab	nir_krakauer shows this has been implemented
#46601	Command window problems on secondary portrait monitor	rik5 suggest likely to have been fixed.
#46640	[octave forge] (statistics) Can't install if io is not loaded	lostbard asks if anyone still has this issue
#47496	Values in Workspace view are limited by 10 numbers	mtmiller states let's just call this won't fix
#47553	textscan Whitespace characters different from Matlab	lachlan states You're welcome to close it
#48088	document that issquare, iscolumn, isempty, etc operate on cell arrays	pot states this is probably good enough
#48740	fieldnames(obj,'-full')	OP states now this bug is fixed.
#49072	assigning double arrays to cell arrays: matlab incompatibility?	mtmiller states may also be closed later as won't fix if no one reports any interest in working on this
#49091	MinGW std::acosh less accurate than Linux versions	rik5 states This and #48312 were supposed to be closed at the same time.
#49135	gnuplot: Default font must be set for "windows" terminal	rik5 states was implemented on stable branch prior to 4.2 and the default after
#49275	history_append: new boolean option to mimic bash "histappend" option	hardy states I think I will let it rest in peace.
#49360	odeset lacks documentation for solver options	siko1056 on 28.09.2018 So maybe leave it open for another two years.
#50369	FLTK uimenu position inconsistent	rik5 questions the bugs merit
#50502	[octave forge] (optim) nonlin_curvefit crash in 1.5.2	OP explicitly asks to close this bug
#60515	trace documentation	jwe asks if there is anything to fix
#60652	Console becomes unusable after a few minutes of use	OP never reported back
#60763	use of function 'properties' within a classdef appears to confuse parser	jwe asks to close report

The equivalent suggestions for patches.

patch	patch title	status
#7537	Handle matlab way to store cell arrays in hdf5 files.	nrjank states otherwise close bug as a 'won't fix'
#7825	built-in versions of base2dec and dec2base	sebald states The fix is simple
#8046	[octave forge] (nan): ranks function - add support for multi-D arrays	nrjank states patch likely can be closed.
#8369	[octave forge] (image): imresize - Change to imresize to reduce memory footprint	fgnievinski suggests this is a duplicate of a bug and requests someone please close the present one.
#8666	doc: adjusting octave examples test to exactly match output	siko1056 asks if anyone want to work on this otherwise we should close this item.
#8870	[octave forge] (odepkg) add metainfo.xml file for Gnome Software	nrjank asks if this patch be closed
#9066	[octave forge] (communications) rcosfir: new function (deprecated but still present in Matlab)	nir_krakauer states yes, it can be closed.
#9631	[octave forge] (benchmark) overhaul	mtmiller considers dropping this patch
#9693	[octave forge] (signal) sos2ss: new function	mtmiller states on 2018.09.26 feel free to ping or push if it gets to be the end of October

See also

• Projects