Editing Online Developer Meeting (2021-07-27)

* Date: Tuesday, July 27, 2021 @ 18:00 UTC
* Location: https://meet.jit.si/octave-dev-2021-07-27

== Todays topics ==

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

=== Octave 6.3 released ===
* No "official" announcement happened.  Maybe reuse abandoned mailing-lists to announce important events, such as releases.
* How do distribution maintainers get to know about Octave releases?
** Contact Debian maintainers of the Octave package to maybe improve our communication.
*** Done, already answered: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/octave-maintainers/2021-07/msg00001.html

=== Octave 6.4 / 7 / 8 ===
* Discussion how to continue with the development.
** jwe wants to introduce breaking changes (see below).
* Octave should stick with the ~yearly major release cycle
** Probably no Octave 6.4 (only if severe bugs occur).
** Octave 7 (default branch)
*** Should no longer receive "very" breaking changes (e.g. String-class for Octave 8)
*** Has about 305 bugs fixed (not 100% reliable figure) and should not wait another year until many bigger outstanding changes happen (will be deferred to Octave 8)
*** Tentative plan:
**** November 2021 merge default to stable.
**** End of 2021 release of Octave 7
** Octave 8 (new default branch)
*** No clear decision how to handle very breaking changes until November 2021 merge default to stable.  Depends on future needs.

=== Octave 7 / 8 ===
* [https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/arguments.html Function argument parsing] (introduced in Matlab R2019b, rather new)
** jwe will continue to work on this feature on Octave 7 (default branch)
** If feature cannot be completed by the end of the year, it will be disabled on parser-level (error), and introduced in Octave 8 one year later.
* New GUI command widget
** Possible to introduce it as user opt-in in Octave 7
** Pending issues:
*** Command-widget does not look like the previous one (textbox for command input)
*** jwe needs better looking widget (avoid developing a new one)
*** No possibility to run external applications (like emacs, pager), which is already partially broken now.  Need to implement own paging strategy (scroll bars, etc.)
* Deprecation of Octave operators
** Improve Matlab compatibility
** Some extensions make it painful to implement Matlab compatible command-style function calls?  See also the [https://octave.discourse.group/t/parsing-command-style-function-call-syntax/1414/7 discussion] about this topic.
*** Remove rarely used extensions like "**" power.
*** Discussion about removal of "+=", "++", etc.  No final decision made.
*** Often used extensions must probably stay (like "!" or "!=" used in place of "~" or "~=").

=== C++ shared pointer / liboctave ===
* jwe had a look at Octave own reference counting
* Wish to replace it with C++ shared pointers
* Expert knowledge wanted!  jwe opened a [https://octave.discourse.group/t/using-std-shared-ptr-t-to-implement-copy-on-write-objects-in-octave/1436 discussion thread]
* jwe identified "copy expensive" inefficiency about mxArray to octave_value conversion? Root of the trouble lies in historical handling of complex data?  See this [https://octave.discourse.group/t/improving-performance-of-data-transfer-to-and-from-mex-functions/1437 discussion].

== Previous topics ==
:''The following items were not discussed.  Just some links to progress on those items are displayed.''

=== Octave 6.3.0 ===

* [[6.3 Release Checklist]]
* jwe prepared a [https://octave.discourse.group/t/release-candidate-available/1227/67 second release candidate].
* If nothing big shows up, go ahead with the release in about 10 days (early July).

=== OctConf? ===
* Instead of an in-person conference, meet up virtually.
* Ideas for code-sprint?
** Improve test coverage
** That could include automated tests for GUI features ("expect", Qt test classes, set <code>OCTAVE_SHOW_GUI_MESSAGES</code> to 1 to display signals with missing connections, ...). Does anyone have experience with this?

=== GUI ===
* Make widgets more modular
** remove connections to parents (or parents of parents,...)
** Only pass settings objects (instead of base qwidget) to widgets?
* Add widgets for:
** displaying call stack. Select function in stack for appropriate <code>dbup</code> or <code>dbdown</code> command.
** displaying result to an expression. Similar to debugger (watcher, ...)
* User expectations for evaluation code from the editor ("Evaluate selection") or the variable editor ("plot") while there is still pending input on the command line?

=== Breakpoints ===
* Add feature to temporarily disable breakpoints
* Check syntax for breakpoints in subfunctions, local functions, private functions, methods, ... (<code>dbstatus</code>). See: [https://octave.discourse.group/t/identifiers-for-breakpoints/1291 Identifiers for breakpoints]

=== <code>gsvd</code> ===
* Current version is not Matlab-compatible nor correct in some circumstances.
* Rik is currently implementing a replacement.

=== IRC channel on Freenode is down? ===
* Replacement on libera?
* <strike>jwe will probably post something on discourse.</strike>
* See: [https://octave.discourse.group/t/irc-channel-for-octave/1348 IRC channel for Octave] (on Discourse).

== See also ==

* Next meeting: [[Online Developer Meeting (2021-08-24)]]
* Last meeting: [[Online Developer Meeting (2021-06-22)]]

[[Category:2021]]
[[Category:Meetings]]