Hi,
Thanks for the helpful replies.
> The Next Step would be to show the maintainers of the control package, me being one of them your ideas and get it approved.
Do I do that via this mailing list or via the the patch tracker ? (I will have to sign up for it then)
> Not really, but you may have a good start at establishing one.
I was thinking of adding a page in the Octave wiki if my modification is accepted. An end to end tutorial by example.
> 'make all' target creates the PKG_ADD file (and 'make clean' removes it) necessary for running all compiled functions. The same could easily be done in the control package.
I will go through the 'make all' for 'signal' package to get an idea of how to generate PKG_ADD file for control also.
> Is this about unfamiliarity with mercurial or distributed VCS in general?
Yes, I have never used anything other than SVN with TortoiseSVN and never contributed to any project. I will go through the Mercurial tutorials linked when ever I face any difficulty.
> Add one or more relevant unit tests to the .m file, and verify that 'test func' and 'make check' passes all tests.
> Use 'hg export' to create mercurial patch files that you can submit on the Octave Savannah bug tracker or patch tracker. Alternatively, you may host your mercurial branch on a public repository (on bitbucket or sourceforge, for example) and mention the branch location in a bug report or patch ticket as a pull request.
Thanks. I will probably follow the patch tracker route since I am not likely to be regular contributor. I will read the HG tutorial and learn how to make a patch file.
> You could try 'make run OCTAVE="octave --gui"' to see if that helps get the workflow that you want.
That didnt work for me since the gui started up in the last opened directory and so the '--path inst' and '--path src' were not visible to Octave. So they were not added in the path.
> Even in command line mode, Octave should still allow you to use figures and user interface controls.
Octave showed the figure as an 'ascii art' instead of opening a regular window.
> but try making your modifications, then build the normal way and then to open GUI octave after building, try: './run-octave --gui'
Since Octave started up in the 'last opened directory', i could'nt addpath('inst'). I had to addpath('/fullpath/to/my/clone/inst');
I will see the signal package as mentioned above to see how to make an add_pkg file or follow my existing workflow.