Online Developer Meeting (2025-05-27)

• Date: Tuesday, May 27, 2025 @ 18:00 UTC Convert timezones here!
• Location: https://meet.jit.si/octave-dev

Today's topics

• Release of Octave 10.2.0
• Octave packages and sourceforge?

Previous topics

• Run-time checks for adequate libraries
  • BLAS library can be correct at compile-time, but switched at run-time to one that is not (MacOS and functions with float types). How should this be handled? As long as the number of checks is small, and doesn't impact startup time, this seems reasonable. If the number of checks grows beyond one or two, it would be good to move them to a new file for organizational purposes.
  • Java 1.9 or higher is now required for Octave 11. How to check at run-time in initialize_jvm that JVM is adequate? This does not seem to be an actual issue. The machine building Octave must have Java 1.9 or higher, and there is a configure check for this. The Java code that Octave uses is compiled to bytecodes, and these bytecodes can run on any JVM including older ones like 1.8.
    • tactic #1: initialize JVM and call FindClass("java/lang/ref/Cleaner") and then tear down JVM if it is not adequate.
    • tactic #2: check Java version number against 1.9 before initializing (but may be difficult to have cross-platform compatibility)
• Use C BLAS interface? Maybe. If it solves other problems, such as the issue with Fortran singles and Apple BLAS implementation, then it would be reasonable use of developer time to make the switch. Otherwise, the existing code is working fine
• Discussion on continued use of Savannah Bug Tracker It is possible that some of Kai's PHP code could be used to do the searching that we require. If so, then we could limit the number of versions shown in dropdown menus.
  • Latest motivation to find something better is the inability to search for bug reports for old releases.
• Release of Octave 10.2.0: Potential date? Blockers? Decision made to start 10.2.0 release. Put a call out on Discourse for any bugs that really should be included in this release.

See also

• Next meeting: Online Developer Meeting (2025-07-01)
• Prev meeting: Online Developer Meeting (2025-04-22)