Re: Differences between Octave 2.1.7x and 2.9.x

[David Bateman]

Matthias Brennwald wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> is there a list of the differences between Octave 2.1.7x and 2.9.x?
> 
> I recently upgraded from 2.1.72 to 2.9.9 (running under Mac OS X  
> 10.4). I am quite annoyed by the fact that my code does not work as  
> expected anymore. For instance, '__gnuplot_set__' and 'mesh' seem to  
> behave differently (at least my plotting routines are broken), and I  
> had to rewrite my startup file because the behavior of 'path' command  
> changed. I guess there are many more changes that I didn't find yet.  
> In other words: I am pretty sure my code is broken with 2.9.x, but I  
> don't know how and where. How can I find out what has changed?
> 
> I guess most of the changes from 2.1.7x to 2.9.x were made to improve  
> the compatibility with Matlab. At the same time, however, Octave is  
> not compatible with itself anymore! Also, it seems to me that these  
> changes were made out of the blue (which, I hope, is not the case!).  
> Before changing commands, the user should at least be notified or  
> warned when using commands that will (potentially) change in the  
> future. One may argue that 2.9.x should be considered as a test  
> version, and that I therefore shouldn't be complaining, which is  
> propably right. Yet, I guess the changes will make it into version  
> 3.0, which MUST therefore come with a complete list of changes. And  
> please don't hide this list anywhere deep in the heap of the files  
> coming with Octave. How about an online history whose URL is  
> displayed during the startup of Octave?
> 

Most of the user visible changes are reported in the NEWS file available at

http://velveeta.che.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/octave/NEWS?rev=HEAD

The gnuplot changes aren't however, but probably should be.

D.