Editing Octave for Debian systems

For Debian, and Debian based distributions such as Ubuntu, specific solutions. 

== Pre-compiled binaries ==

=== Distribution repositories ===

Binary packages for Octave and many Octave-Forge packages are provided by all versions of Debian and Ubuntu. These are the most well-tested binaries available and should work best for most users.

 sudo apt-get install octave

Aside the {{codeline|octave}} package that installs GNU Octave, other pieces of it are split over multiple packages. These are {{codeline|octave-doc}}, {{codeline|octave-info}}, and {{codeline|octave-htmldoc}} for the documentation, {{codeline|liboctave-dev}} for the octave development library and required to install some Octave Forge packages, and {{codeline|octave-dbg}} for the debugging symbols.

For Debian stable users, there may also be newer packages available in backports, so don't forget to check there.

=== Octave's Personal Package Archive (PPA) ===

However, for some Ubuntu releases the octave packages are old (Debian Squeeze and Ubuntu 12.04 or older only have Octave version 3.2).  The [https://launchpad.net/~octave GNU Octave Team] on Launchpad maintain a PPA providing a binary packages of the latest stable versions of Octave for all versions of Ubuntu. To set up your system to install these packages

 sudo apt-add-repository ppa:octave/stable
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install octave

== Compiling from source ==
The only ''tricky'' part is to install the dependencies. Once that is solved, installing from source should be as easy as {{Codeline|./configure && make && make install}}. See the manual for the [http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Running-Configure-and-Make.html configure options].

=== HDF5 issue ===
With new Debian versions you may get the following when building from source:

{{warning|HDF5 library not found.  Octave will not be able to save or load HDF5 data files.}}

The problem is that there are multiple versions of the hdf5 package.  Octave was written with the serial version in mind but it is likely to work with the others (OpenMPI and Mpich). Due to the naming scheme done in Debian, it is required to specify the location of the libraries.  See bug {{bug|38928}} for details but basically, use the following when running configure:

 ./configure --with-hdf5-includedir=/usr/include/hdf5/serial/ --with-hdf5-libdir=/usr/lib/$(dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_MULTIARCH)/hdf5/serial/

=== Dependencies ===
{{Note|different Debian and Ubuntu versions may have slightly different package names but their differences should be pretty small, mostly limited to version numbers.}}

==== The easy way (but possibly incomplete) ====
The easy way to install ''most'' of the necessary dependencies is to {{Codeline|sudo apt-get build-dep octave}}. This will install all packages necessary to build and prepare a Debian package for the octave version available on your system repositories. However:
* will install unnecessary packages related to the building of a Debian package;
* may miss some new dependencies;
* may install packages that are no longer octave dependencies.

==== The even easier way ====

The [http://wiki.octave.org/MXE MXE-octave] package provides a way to compile Octave for different platforms. Dependencies and certain flags are handled automatically.

==== The right way ====
The best way is to select and install all the dependencies as listed in the {{Path|INSTALL.OCTAVE}} file. The following are their package names in Debian repositories (they will have their own dependencies which your package maintainer will solve automatically).

{{Warning|Debian repositories has several libraries for dealing with HDF data files. The recommended is {{Codeline|libhdf5-serial-dev}}. However, the {{Forge|msh|msh package}} requires [http://www.geuz.org/gmsh/ gmsh] which is incompatible with it.}}
{{Warning|the GraphicsMagick++ library (libgraphicsmagick++-dev) on the Debian repositories was compiled with quantum 8 which limits reading images to 8 bit. The solution is to recompile [[GraphicsMagick]] with quantum 
16 or 32 before building Octave.}}
{{Note|if only the native graphics toolkit will be used, gnuplot will not be necessary.}}

* build tools
:<pre>g++ gcc gfortran make</pre>
* external packages
:<pre>libblas-dev liblapack-dev libpcre3-dev</pre>
* optional but ''strongly'' recommended. Check the [http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/External-Packages.html Octave manual] for more information on them. Packages marked with * are virtual packages (you'll have to pick one of the displayed versions).
:{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Dependency        !! Debian Squeeze(Old Stable)           !! Ubuntu 13.10
|-
| ARPACK            || libarpack2-dev                       || libarpack2-dev
|-
| cURL              || libcurl4-gnutls-dev                  || libcurl4-gnutls-dev
|-
| epstool           || epstool                              || epstool
|-
| FFTW3             || libfftw3-dev                         || libfftw3-dev
|-
| fig2dev           || transfig                             || transfig
|-
| FLTK              || libfltk-dev *                        || libfltk-dev *
|-
| fontconfig        || libfontconfig1-dev                   || libfontconfig1-dev
|-
| FreeType          || libfreetype6-dev                     || libfreetype6-dev
|-
| gl2ps             || libgl2ps-dev                         || libgl2ps-dev
|-
| GLPK              || libglpk-dev                          || libglpk-dev
|-
| GNU Readline      || libreadline-dev                      || libreadline-dev
|-
| gnuplot           || gnuplot                              || gnuplot
|-
| GraphicsMagick++  || libgraphicsmagick++-dev              || libgraphicsmagick++-dev
|-
| HDF5              || libhdf5-serial-dev                   || libhdf5-serial-dev
|-
| Java JDK          || openjdk-7-jdk                        || openjdk-7-jdk
|-
| LLVM              || llvm-dev *                           || llvm-dev *
|-
| lpr               || lpr                                  || lpr
|-
| makeinfo          || texinfo                              || texinfo
|-
| OpenGL            || libgl-dev *                          || libgl-dev *
|-
| pstoedit          || pstoedit                             || pstoedit
|-
| Qhull             || libqhull-dev                         || libqhull-dev
|-
| QRUPDATE          || libqrupdate-dev                      || libqrupdate-dev
|-
| QScintilla        || libqscintilla2-dev                   || libqscintilla2-dev
|-
| Qt                || libqt4-dev libqtcore4 libqtwebkit4 libqt4-network libqtgui4 || libqt4-dev libqtcore4 libqtwebkit4 libqt4-network libqtgui4
|-
| SuiteSparse       || libsuitesparse-dev                   || libsuitesparse-dev
|-
| Xft               || libxft-dev                           || libxft-dev
|-
| zlib              || zlib1g-dev                           || zlib1g-dev
|-
|}

==== Building development version ====
If you are building development versions, you'll require some more packages as listed on {{Path|etc/HACKING}} and {{Path|INSTALL}}. Many of them will already be installed on your system.

===== development tools =====
<pre>autoconf automake bison flex gperf gzip libtool perl rsync tar</pre>

===== extra dependencies for the development version =====

:{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Dependency        !! Debian Wheezy (stable)  !! Debian Jessie (testing)
|-
| PortAudio         || portaudio19-dev         || portaudio19-dev
|-
| OSMesa            || [[Build libosmesa]]     || 9.0.0 
|-
|}

[[Category:Building]]
[[Category:Installation]]
[[Category:Debian]]