Octave for Red Hat Linux systems

For RedHat-based distributions like RedHat, CentOS, Fedora, Scientific Linux ...

Unspecific RH

Tested Fedora 20, but not completely.

 yum install gcc gcc-c++ kernel-devel make mercurial libtool libtool-ltdl-devel libtool-ltdl autoconf cmake lapack-devel \
 lapack pcre-devel readline-devel readline fftw-devel glpk-devel suitesparse suitesparse-devel gnuplot libcurl-devel zlib-devel \
 flex texlive gperf fltk-devel qhull-devel hdf5-devel gl2ps-devel qrupdate-devel arpack-devel qscintilla-devel llvm-devel qt-devel \
 bison ghostscript-devel librsvg2-tools icoutils

CentOS

Install base CentOS 6.4 system from minimal install disk. netinstall disk does not work from local iso disk image.

Setup Network

reboot and start the network because it is disabled by default:

   ifup eth0
   dhclient eth0

edit `/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0` to enable on next boot. change `ONBOOT` to yes

Install X11/DE

update yum

   yum update -y

install desktop environment using:

   yum -y groupinstall basic-desktop desktop-platform x11 fonts

set system to boot to graphical interface by default

   edit /etc/inittab and set default run level to 5
   init 5

Prepare system and dependencies

finish setting up system and creating user

configure sudo

   su
   edit /etc/sudoers file to enable sudo for wheel group
   edit /etc/group and add new user to wheel group

Remaining commands done with sudo

enable use of Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL)

   yum -y install wget
   wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
   rpm -Uvh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

install octave dependencies development packages:

   yum -y install yum-utils
   yum-builddep -y octave
   yum -y install qt-devel mercurial gcc-c++ lapack-devel libtool
   yum -y install epstool transfig pstoedit qscintilla-devel

prepare installation of octave

The remaining steps do not need to be done as root, except for possibly the final installation step. I recommend you create an installation directory like /usr/local/octave/VERSION so that it is easy to uninstall a given version simply by removing a directory tree. Then to use the installed version, put /usr/local/octave/VERSION/bin in your PATH. If you create the /usr/local/octave/VERSION directory with appropriate permissions, it is not necessary to be root to install Octave. For example,

   mkdir -p /usr/local/octave/dev
   chown jwe.jwe /usr/local/octave/dev

create src and build directories:

   mkdir src build

get source code of octave and compile it

check out a copy of the octave sources in the src directory

   cd src
   hg clone http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave

• bootstrap the build system

   cd octave
   ./bootstrap

• build Octave in the build directory. choose whatever prefix is appropriate for your system. the -jN option builds in parallel

   cd ../../build
   ../src/octave/configure --prefix=/usr/local/octave/dev
   make -j6 all

• Run the test suite

   make check

• If everything looks OK (a few failures are probably normal for the development version) install it

   make install