How to compile Octave for linux?

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Installing Octave could be difficult for novice users.  It requires installing lot of packages. Here is the brief information on compiling for your computer:

Step 1

Go to the website: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/and downloadthe latest release of GNU Octave and download the .tar file of it. Currently the latest version is 3.6.3 and can be downloaded directly from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/octave-3.6.3.tar.gz

Step 2

After downloading, open a terminal window (ctrl+alt+T) and execute the following commands. The following commands are required to download dependencies from internet.

cd Downloads

sudo apt-get install g++

sudo  apt-get install blas-devel

sudo  apt-get install lapack-devel

sudo  apt-get install texinfo

sudo  apt-get install gnuplot

sudo  apt-get install arpack-devel

sudo  apt-get install libcurl-dev

sudo apt-get install libfltk-dev

sudo apt-get install fontconfig

sudo apt-get install glpk

sudo apt-get install libhdf5-serial-dev

sudo apt-get install glu

sudo apt-get install libsuitesparse-dev

sudo apt-get install build-essential

sudo apt-get install gfortran

Step 3

Unzip and configure Octave

Step 4

Compile Octave

Step 5

install Octave if you would like to call it globally. This is an optional step since Octave can be run from the compiled directory.