Code sprint in 2015?

[Rik]

11/23/15

All,

I don't think we've held an Octave code sprint this year, and it is
starting to be a good time of year to do so.  Usually things relax a little
bit at work and there are a few holidays near the end of the year which
means everyone has more time to spend on fun activities like Octave.  I
think Jordi has organized these in the past and he could do so again, or
share what needs to be done.

We could have a particular theme for the sprint, or it could be just an
open coding session with everyone on the Octave IRC channel.  If we do a
theme, I had a few ideas in mind.

1) Finish elimination of error_state variable in C++ code (~80 instances left)
  Help jwe out in this task.  The remaining instances need more thought
than the simple eliminations already done.

2) Refactor C++ code to resemble m-files with input validation first (~530
instances)
  Now that Octave uses exceptions, it is possible to write C++ code that
looks very much like an m-file.  This has some benefits in making the code
more understandable (cuddling error messages with the test that generates
the message) and more readable (since it eliminates at least 2 levels of
indent [4 spaces]).

3) Remove class of function from documentation
  Current documentation assigns each function to a class, such as
"Command", "Function File", "Mapping Function", "Loadable Function",
"Built-in Function", or "Operator".  This isn't really necessary for the
user, and is often confusing when something can be called in a Command or
Function manner.  It also takes up a good deal of screen space when using
"help function_name".  The actual elimination can be done automatically
with a Perl script, but jwe wanted some changes to the help functions so
that "help function_name" would print the location of the function if it
came from somewhere besides the core, such as an Octave-Forge package.

Feel free to suggest more themes.

Cheers,
Rik