This directory contains development releases of Octave.

If you want a stable, well-tested version of Octave, you should be
looking at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave.

Development releases are provided for people who want to help test,
debug, and improve Octave.  Very little testing is done before making
the development releases and they may even be made when Octave is in
an inconsistent state.  It is possible that you will encounter a
very obvious bug, such as failure to compile on *any* machine.  It is
likely that such bugs will be fixed by the next development release,
so it really isn't necessary to report them unless they persist over
more than one release.

Please DO report other bugs in the development releases as soon as you
find them by sending a message to octave-maintainers@octave.org (but
first read the bug reporting guidelines provided at
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/bugs.html).

If you have a fix for a bug, or an enhancement to submit, send your
patch to octave-maintainers@octave.org.  Here are some simple
guidelines for submitting patches:

  o Use "context diffs" for patches.  A typical command for generating
    context diffs is "diff -rc octave-old octave-new".  If you are
    using the Mercurial sources a patch generated with "hg export" is
    preferred.

  o Use the "minimalist approach" for patches.  That is, each patch
    should address only one particular bug, new feature, etc.  Do not
    save up many unrelated changes and submit them all in one big
    patch, since in general, the larger the patch the more difficult
    it is for me to decide if the patch is either correct or
    desirable.

  o Submit a sample ChangeLog entry with your patch.  See the
    existing Octave ChangeLog for examples of what a ChangeLog entry
    should look like.

If you would like to be on the very sharpest part of the bleeding
edge, you can now use Mercurial to access Octave's current development
sources.  Instructions for checking out a copy are available on the
web at http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/download.html.

Last updated: Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:14:50 EDT