Octave for Slackware

Building Octave on Slackware

Octave is contained in the SlackBuilds repository. To build [Octave], you will also need the [BLAS] and [LAPACK] libraries, which are not contained in a Slackware standard installation. Note that there are further dependencies which are optional, e.g. for me, GraphicsMagick. They are also listed on the Slackbuilds octave page. The rest of this page is just following the steps for slackbuilds one by one, so if you want to do it yourself, go to the [Slackbuilds Howto] and follow these instructions one by one.

To install the packages, go on their Slackbuilds page and donwload the source packages of lapack and octave (under "Source Downloads") and the SlackBuild (named blas.tar.gz, lapack.tar.gz, octave.tar.gz). If you want a more recent version of octave than the SlackBuild, download that, and please inform the SlackBuild maintainer that there is a newer version of octave.

In the end, what I did, was:

• tar -xzf blas.tar.gz
• cp lapack-$VERSION.tgz blas/
• cd blas
• chmod u+x blas.SlackBuild
• [modify blas.info to fit the right version, modify blas.SlackBuild if you want to change compiling parameters. I removed the `chown root:root ...` line from the slackbuild, since then I could build as user]
• ./blas.SlackBuild
• sudo installpkg /tmp/blas-$VERSION.txz

Then, the same, replacing blas with lapack and octave. And, in my case, before octave, any dependencies you might need (e.g., GraphicsMagick).