How to Install Octave in El Capitan?

Solution 1:

Using MacPorts ( http://macports.org/ ), with insight from instructions at http://blog.hani-ibrahim.de/en/octave4-mac-os-x-el-capitan-install.html (as well as http://blog.hani-ibrahim.de/en/octave-mac-os-x-el-capitan-install.html and http://blog.hani-ibrahim.de/en/octave4-upgrade-via-macports.html) as well as the Octave wiki at http://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_MacOS_X#MacPorts

It seems as though MacPort's default atlas variant doesn't play nice with Octave, and arpac and qrupdate also have issues with their default installion, needing specific "variants" to properly build. Basically to get all of Octave 4 running, I did:

sudo port install atlas +gcc5
sudo port install arpack -accelerate+atlas+gfortran 
sudo port install qrupdate -accelerate+atlas+gcc5
sudo port install octave -gcc5+gfortran-accelerate+atlas+docs+fltk+graphicsmagick+java-gui-metis-qtgui+app+qt4gui+sound

Probably some of the octave variant flags are unneeded for some people, but I went with the options suggested by hani-ibrahim.de and it works for me to get command line Octave up and running, as well as giving a nifty Octave.app in the /Applications/MacPorts directory.

If you need Java support with the Java variant (+java) as above, you probably need a JDK (Java Development Kit) to get the necessary command line suff for that magic to work, so go to ( http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/index.html ) for a download. Maybe the smaller JRE (Java Runtime Environment) would be sufficient, but I have installed the full JDK. Omitting the (+java) flag removes this requirement.

I just tested it (2016/09/01) on Mac OS X 10.11.6 and was able to intall via MacPorts with no errors, ending up with atlas @3.10.2_2, arpack @3.3.0_3, qrupdate @1.1.2_4 and octave @4.0.3_0

On about 2016/12/05, with just the xcode command line tools installed (not the full XCode), I was able to use the above to install on macOS 10.12.1 Sierra: arpack @3.3.0_3, atlas @3.10.2_2, qrupdate @1.1.2_4, and octave @4.2.0_1. I initially was not able to get 4.2.0_0 installed, but 0_1 finally did. The installation ended with the warning "unless octave is run with –no-gui-libs, graphics_toolkit(“fltk”) will cause a crash" but I have not investigated this issue.

Solution 2:

From my homebrew:

brew info octave
homebrew/science/octave: stable 4.0.0 (bottled), HEAD
high-level interpreted language for numerical computing  
https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/index.html
Not installed

and

brew cask info octave
octave: 3.8.2-1
Octave
https://gnu.org/software/octave/
Not installed

xoctave is a gui which I suspect is independent. I'd use homebrew for the installation.

FWIW the Octave wiki it explains what to do:

brew tap homebrew/science
brew update && brew upgrade --all
brew install octave

Solution 3:

if you have already installed gcc...

sudo chown -R (username):admin /usr/local/lib/gcc/

and

brew install octave

after this, you make cross fingers...