MXE

MXE-Octave is based on the MXE project and is useful for the following scenarios:

1. Cross-compilation for MS Windows (see also Windows_Installer) and other platforms.
2. Building Octave on outdated Linux systems (e.g. only an old GCC version is available).
3. Building Octave without root permission.

MXE-Octave is not the best choice for building Octave, if your system already provides recent versions of GCC and other required build dependencies.

Examples of compiling Octave for different platforms

• Compiling for your Linux system

1. Download MXE-Octave as a compressed file.
2. Unpack it in ~ or somewhere suitable.
3. Check you have all the requirements, gfortran and libgl2ps-dev.
4. cd into the directory (called ~/mxe-octave-123456789 or similiar).
5. Type: ./bootstrap
6. Type: ./configure --enable-64 --enable-native-build --enable-pic-flag host_alias=gnu-linux --enable-openblas --enable-jit
7. Type: make
8. Type: make openblas
9. cd usr/lib
10. mv libblas.so libblas.so.reference
11. ln -s libopenblas.so libblas.so
12. Octave will exist in ~/mxe-octave-123456789/usr/bin
13. Add to your .bashrc file: alias octave=~/mxe-octave-123456789/usr/bin/octave

It's that easy...

• Compiling for your Ubuntu Desktop x64 Linux (tested for 14.xx)

1. In Ubuntu Desktop Linux 14.10 the above recipe fails during building BLAS library ...
2. I have found a working solution how to build Octave 3.8.2 with ---enable-64 in Ubuntu Desktop Linux - see:
3. BLOG: http://calaba.tumblr.com/post/107087607479/octave-64
4. GitHub: https://github.com/calaba/octave-3.8.2-enable-64-ubuntu-14.04

Note for gnuplot

The gnuplot built by mxe-octave does not support cairo based terminals and lua/tikz terminals. If you want uses those feature, prepare gnuplot with those features and points its location setting to "gnuplot_binary" like

 >> gnuplot_binary /usr/bin/gnuplot