Octave for Microsoft Windows: Difference between revisions

Octave for Microsoft Windows (edit)

Revision as of 18:40, 17 February 2017

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Updated for 4.2.0, general download link added to top of page.

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 :''This article is about using pre-built installers of Octave for Windows; for instructions about building it, see [[Windows Installer]].''
-GNU Octave is primarily developed on GNU/Linux and other [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX POSIX] conform systems. The ports of GNU Octave to Microsoft Windows use different approaches to get most of the original Octave and adapt it to Microsoft Windows idiosyncrasies (e.g. dynamic libraries, file paths, permissions, environment variables, GUI system, etc). Bear this in mind and don't panic if you get unexpected results. There are a lot of suggestions on the mailing lists for tuning your Octave installation. GNU Octave standalone ports for Windows are independently compiled using either the [http://mingw.org MinGW] or Microsoft Visual Studio development environments (3.6 or before).
+The most recent Windows installers are available from [https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/windows/ ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/windows/].
+Users are encouraged to use the latest version unless a specific feature or requirement warrants using an older version of the software. Version specific instructions and installation notes are provided below.
+Be advised that GNU Octave is primarily developed on GNU/Linux and other [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX POSIX] conform systems. The ports of GNU Octave to Microsoft Windows use different approaches to get most of the original Octave and adapt it to Microsoft Windows idiosyncrasies (e.g. dynamic libraries, file paths, permissions, environment variables, GUI system, etc). Bear this in mind and don't panic if you get unexpected results. There are a lot of suggestions on the mailing lists for tuning your Octave installation. GNU Octave standalone ports for Windows are independently compiled using either the [http://mingw.org MinGW] or Microsoft Visual Studio development environments (3.6 or before).
 __TOC__
 = Installers for Microsoft Windows =
+===Octave-4.2.0===
+The easiest way to install GNU Octave on Microsoft Windows is using [http://hg.octave.org/mxe-octave/ MXE] builds. For the current 4.2.0 release both 32-bit and 64-bit installers and zip archived packages can be found at [https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/windows/ ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/windows/].
+For executable installers the user can simply run the downloaded file and follow the onscreen installation prompts.  It is recommended that the installation path not include spaces or non-ASCII characters. Shortcuts to the program will be automatically created.
+For the zip-file archives, the user should extract the file content to a directory on the harddrive (such as C:\Octave). Manual shortcuts can then be created to either the octave.bat or octave.vbs files in the main installation directory.
+====Packages====
+A selection of pre-built octave-forge packages are prepared for all versions of the official release. If you installed Octave using the executable installer you can confirm the package list by typing the command below from the Octave command prompt:
+  >> pkg list
+If you instead installed Octave from the .zip archive, you need to first rebuild the package list on your local machine. (The command above will produce a blank output and packages will be inaccessible before rebuilding.) Do this by typing the following command:
+  >> pkg rebuild
+''A bug in the Windows builds currently prevents Octave from automatically retrieving packages from the website for installation or updates. This will be fixed in the next Octave release. Until then, manual package installation is necessary to update or install new packages on Windows.''
+To manually install a new or updated package version, the package file can be downloaded from the [https://octave.sourceforge.io/packages.php Octave-Forge website]to the working directory and can be installed using:
+   >> pkg install package_file_name.tar.gz
+Detailed instruction of installing Octave-Forge packages is shown at [http://wiki.octave.org/Octave-Forge Octave-Forge]
+=Older version instructions=
+''Note that the instructions below may contain outdated links or instructions that are no longer relevant to current versions''
+==Older MXE builds==
 ===Octave-4.0.3===
@@ Line 99: / Line 133: @@
 :see cygport documentation for further info.
-=Older instructions=
-==MinGW ports==
+==Older MinGW ports==
 ===Octave-4.0.0 ===
@@ Line 798: / Line 832: @@
 *From gnuplot-4.4.0, the default terminal of gnuplot for windows is the wxt terminal. Some users may set the GNUTERM environmental variable for the windows terminal being default. The gnuplot for windows allows to set GNUTERM to 'win' (abbreviated form) but octave does not recognize the abbreviated form for terminal name. If one would like set GNUTERM to windows terminal, one should specify it as 'windows' (full form) but not 'win' (abbreviated form). In detail see the following thread: http://old.nabble.com/flicking-problem-again-Octave-3.2.4-mingw32-td28038688.html
-==Octave with Visual Studio==
+==Older Octave versions with Visual Studio==
 Octave binaries compiled with Microsoft Visual Studio are available for download from [http://sourceforge.net/projects/octave/files/Octave%20Windows%20binaries/Octave%203.6.4%20for%20Windows%20Microsoft%20Visual%20Studio/ Octave-Forge site]. These binaries come in the form of an easy-to-use installer (created with [http://nsis.sourceforge.net/ NSIS]) and are provided in 2 flavors: pre-compiled version for Visual Studio 2008 and for Visual Studio 2010.