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  • Help updating outdated patches to the latest development version (this requires some Mercurial knowledge).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
#36954	datenum / datevec convert date-time string incorrectly during hour lost to DST	siko1056 suggests closing as won't fix
#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
#41661	[octave forge] (generate_html) generate_package_html page header contains wrong links	cdf (OP) asks this item still relevant
#41674	[octave forge] (image) reduce memory footprint of imresize	nrjank suggests the bug has largely been solved (reduced 3x) by other changes on the default branch and the report could be closed unless further improvement (which would have to be done to imremap) is possible.
#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
#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
#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
#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.
#53576	[octave forge] (symbolic) dsolve errors on sqrt coefficient	cbm states should be fixed in the next sympy 1.4, can be closed
#54156	[octave forge] (communications) qfuncinv should use erfcinv instead of norminv	appears can be closed
#54679	datenum accepts a matrix, which is undocumented	apjanke provided a patch and phillipnienhuis states Documentation patches are really easy.
#55065	Implement uiopen and uisave	rik states they would be easy to implement
#58530	missing functions: xline() and yline()	rik states I can dust them off and add them to Octave.

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'
#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

A list of patch reports with attachments not marked "Done or Cancelled" can be viewed in the SavannaAPI, sorted by oldest first or sorted by "longest since last comment" first. While some of these older submissions may still be viable and just need a patch refresh to the current code base, many will have become out of date or rendered inapplicable due to code or function changes, and could be closed as 'Wont Fix'.

See also

• Projects