Installing Octave

[LinuXofArabiA]

Hello Everyone,

I am trying to install Octave on my 11.10 Ubuntu, but apparently it is not as easy as I thought.

I downloaded the binary, extracted, navigated to the extracted folder in terminal, and ran ./configure

after a long list of checks and logs configure stops. I assuming it aborted since the few messages I got were

checking whether we are using the GNU Fortran 77 compiler... no
checking whether accepts -g... no
checking how to get verbose linking output from ... configure: WARNING: compilation failed

checking for Fortran 77 libraries of ...
checking for dummy main to link with Fortran 77 libraries... none
checking for Fortran 77 name-mangling scheme... configure: error: in `/home/oshak/octave-3.4.3':
configure: error: cannot compile a simple Fortran program
See `config.log' for more details

then I type 'make' and I get

make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.

I am assuming ./configure didnt finish properly and hence didnt create the make file properly.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I wonder how tough using Octave is going to be if that trouble is only for installing

[PGScooter]

If .configure doesn't finish properly there's no point in running make, in my opinion.
Is there a reason you're compiling from source?

Why not:
sudo apt-get install octave3.2
?
or whichever version 11.10 has (if you're not sure, type octave and then [tab] [tab] and you will see on the list).

[LinuXofArabiA]

Thanks PGScooter. I dunno why I was trying to compile from source, I did what you said and it worked. The challenge now is to learn it. Do you have any good help sources that you would recommend?

Thanks again

[PGScooter]

LinuXofArabiA,

I'm glad it worked! I actually don't know how to use Octave. I have been meaning to learn it myself as well.
This book seems to be pretty good:
GNU Octave Beginner's Guide [Paperback]
Jesper Schmidt Hansen (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Octave-Beginne...9936481&sr=8-1

[sudodus]

There is a built-in manual, but I suggest that you browse the internet for octave tutorial

[Aielyn]

If .configure doesn't finish properly there's no point in running make, in my opinion.
Is there a reason you're compiling from source?

Why not:
sudo apt-get install octave3.2
?
or whichever version 11.10 has (if you're not sure, type octave and then [tab] [tab] and you will see on the list).

Octave on Ubuntu, for some unknown reason, seems stuck in 3.2 (even in Precise), despite the fact that Octave is up to 3.6.1, now. That's probably a good reason for compiling from source. In fact, I've just spent some time trying to find some sort of ubuntu deb to install it using, and have yet to find any - the most up-to-date I can find is 3.2.4-12 (the Ubuntu repositories has 3.2.4-11). Meanwhile, debian, fedora, and suse all have 3.6.1 already, as does arch (it has been less than two weeks since 3.6.1 released)... and 3.4.0 released over a year ago, so you can't even argue that Ubuntu had the most up-to-date version for 11.04, let alone 11.10.

And as I said, it looks like, even in Precise, all we'll be getting is Octave 3.2.4, yet again.

On that point, who should I be contacting about this absurdity? This isn't just a minor issue, because functionality is really quite important when you're developing code to solve mathematical problems.

[Swiss_Knight]

Hi there,

I am also an Octave user, and I would really appreciate that the latest version (3.6.1) is taken into account for Lucid, even through backports.

It's a mess to compile for new users... I'm ok with that, but I advised some people to use some of my scripts and if they want to install Octave, it would be really great to have an easy way to do it.

If some of the octave dev team are aware about that...

Cheers.
Swiss.

[PGScooter]

Is there no Octave PPA? I think you would have more luck trying to convince someone to make a PPA.

[HasanYavuzOZDERYA]

Hi I had the same problem and after installing "gfortran" package I have managed to compile octave 3.6.1. "INSTALL.OCTAVE" file inside of the source package, contains a list of necessary tools/libraries to compile. I had missed the fortran compiler

[userdce]

Updated Octave binaries:

http://octave.org/wiki/index.php?tit..._for_GNU_Linux