Building

This article provides general information about building GNU Octave from source.

General steps

1. Install all build dependencies (see below).
2. Getting the Octave sources ...
   • ... from the development repository

hg clone https://www.octave.org/hg/octave && \
cd octave                                  && \
./bootstrap

• ... from a release

wget https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/octave/octave-9.2.0.tar.gz && \
tar -xzf octave-9.2.0.tar.gz                               && \
cd octave-9.2.0

3. Configure, build, check, and install Octave

mkdir .build                            && \
cd    .build                            && \
./../configure --prefix=$HOME/my_octave && \ 
make -j2                                && \ 
make check                              && \
make install

Dependencies

Most of the dependencies given in this section can be very conveniently installed on many GNU/Linux systems. Please read the respective wiki page for your distribution on the Octave for GNU/Linux page.

On MS Windows and macOS systems the generic Octave build process described on this page needs some more effort to fulfill the described build dependencies. Please read Octave for Microsoft Windows and Octave for macOS for information how to build Octave for the respective systems.

Dependencies marked with green background are required for building Octave. All other tools and libraries are recommended/optional, but very useful features (like the GUI, plotting, etc.) are likely to be disabled.

Build tools

Dependency	Description	License / Copyright
Autoconf	Software configuration	GNU GPL v3.0
Automake	Makefile generator	GNU GPL v3.0
C++, C, and Fortran compilers	Compiling the source code	GNU GPL v3.0
GNU Make	Makefile processor	GNU GPL v3.0
Libtool	Dependency of automake	Free Software Foundation
Unix utilities: gawk, gperf, less, ncurses	Miscellaneous tasks	GNU GPL v3.0
Bison	Parser generator	GNU GPL v3.0
Flex	Lexical analyzer	The Flex project

Documentation tools

Dependency	Description	License / Copyright
epstool	Epstool is a utility to create or extract preview images in EPS files, fix bounding boxes and convert to bitmaps.	GNU GPL v2.0
FTGL	Portable font engine to perform font rendering for Octave’s OpenGL-based graphics functions.	GNU GPL v2.0
GL2PS	GL2PS is a C library providing high quality vector output for any OpenGL application.	GNU LGPL v2.0
Texi2HTML	Perl script which converts Texinfo source files to HTML output.	GNU GPL v3.0
Texinfo	Documentation system that uses a single source to produce both on-line information and printed output.	GNU GPL v3.0
TeX Live	TeX document production system including all the major TeX-related programs, macro packages, and fonts that are free software.	Freely redistributable as defined by the Free Software Foundation

External tools and libraries

Dependency	Description	License / Copyright
BLAS	Basic Linear Algebra Subroutine library	Free - proper attribution request
LAPACK	Linear Algebra Package	Free - proper attribution request
PCRE	Perl Compatible Regular Expression library	Free
GNU Readline	Command-line editing library	GNU GPL v3.0
ARPACK-NG	Solution of large-scale eigenvalue problems	BSD like - various authors
cURL	Library for transferring data with URL syntax	Free Software -- main author
FFTW3	Library for computing discrete Fourier transforms	MIT -- GNU GPL v2.0
FLTK	Portable GUI toolkit	GNU GPL v2.0 with static linking exception
fontconfig	Library for configuring and customizing font access	Provided "as is" -- various authors
FreeType	Portable font engine	compatible with GNU GPL v3.0
GLPK	GNU Linear Programming Kit	GNU GPL v3.0
gnuplot	Interactive graphics program	Provided "as is" -- various authors
GraphicsMagick++	Image processing library	various -- integrates many third-party libs
HDF5	Library for manipulating portable data files	BSD - like
OpenGL	API for portable 2D and 3D graphics	Free specs -- license is driver dependent
Qhull	Computational geometry library	Free software -- specific
QRUPDATE	QR factorization updating library	GNU GPL v3.0
SuiteSparse	Sparse matrix factorization library	Main author
zlib	Data compression library	Provided "as is" -- various authors

Tweaks

Install Octave in home directory

To install multiple versions of GNU Octave on one system, it is recommended to use the --prefix option of the configure script. With this option one can determine a custom installation directory, preferably within your user's home directory, to avoid elevated installation privileges. One does not "clutter" the system by running sudo make install and the custom build Octave can coexist with, for example, your Linux distribution installation of Octave.

In order to start the custom build of Octave almost as convenient as the Linux distribution installation of Octave, one can create an alias within .bashrc:

echo "alias octave38='~/.octave38/bin/octave'" >> ~/.bashrc
. ~/.bashrc # this will update your bashrc without doing logout and login!

If you simply enter octave, you'll start your Linux distribution installation of Octave. But when you enter octave38, you'll start your custom build of Octave inside your home directory.

Managing your own program hierarchy (optional)

If you intend to compile for yourself a lot of utilities, you may use a specific "usr" hierachy into your own dir (Linux from scratch way). Go back to step 2, and configure octave as:

./configure --prefix=${HOME}/usr

The other steps (make; make install) do not change. In order to use your own hierachy, you should set a few environment variables in your .profile:

 # set LD_LIBRARY_PATH if not set
 (echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH | grep -q lib) || export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib:$HOME/usr/lib:$HOME/usr/local/lib"

 # set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
 if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
       (echo $PATH | grep -q $HOME/usr/bin) || export PATH="$HOME/bin:$HOME/usr/bin:$HOME/usr/local/bin:$PATH"
 fi
 
 # set MANPATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
 if [ -d "$HOME/usr/share/man" ] ; then
   (echo $MANPATH | grep -q $HOME/usr/share/man) || export MANPATH="$HOME/usr/local/share/man:$HOME/usr/share/man:`manpath -q`"
 fi
 
 if [ -d "$HOME/usr/share/info" ]; then
   export INFOPATH="$INFOPATH:$HOME/usr/share/info"
 fi
 
 if [ -d "$HOME/usr/lib/python" ]; then
   (echo $PYTHONPATH | grep -q $HOME/usr/lib/python) || export PYTHONPATH="$HOME/usr/local/lib/python:$HOME/usr/lib/python"
 fi
 
 if [ -d "$HOME/usr/lib/pkgconfig" ]; then
   (echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH | grep -q $HOME/usr/lib/pkgconfig) || export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/usr/lib/pkgconfig"
 fi

This way, most ordinary commands like "man octave", "info octave", or launching octave itself, will first explore your own hierachy.

Uninstall

1. If you still have the .build folder, just run make uninstall from it.
2. Just delete the install folder, e.g. rm -rf $HOME/my_octave.

In any case, don't forget to remove any created alias entries in ~/.bashrc.

See also

• README and /etc/HACKING.md in the development repository.
• https://octave.org/doc/interpreter/Installation.html