Posted on July 11, 2019 by Paul
In this article, I will show you how to install and get started with GNU Octave on macOS. In order to test the installation and to exemplify the usage, I will show you how to use Octave for a simple image processing application.
At the time of this writing, the latest stable version of Octave is 5.1.0. Unfortunately the graphical interface of Octave 5.1.0 is buggy on macOS and tends to freeze randomly. If you are OK with using the CLI interface of Octave, you can use version 5.1.0. See the second part of this article for a quick how to install and setup.
The Octave Wiki has instructions for installing Octave on macOS systems. Octave is also available in third-party package managers such as Homebrew and MacPorts. Executable versions of Octave for BSD systems are provided by the individual distributions. Both FreeBSD and OpenBSD have Octave packages. These packages are created by volunteers. Download latest version GNU Octave GNU Octave is a programming language with an integrated development environment (IDE) full of tools to model and simulate a variety of natural and artificial systems that have applications in engineering and science. Octave is cross-platform software with Windows, Linux, Mac, and BSD versions available. Compatible with macOS (10.11 and later, earlier versions may work but have not been tested), any 64-bit MATLAB, and GNU Octave (4.4.1 installed via NB: This package is unsigned; to run it, you need to right click on it and select 'Open' from the menu that pops up.
Since most Octave users will prefer the GUI interface, I will first show you how to install Octave 4.4.1, which seems to be more stable than 5.1.0 on macOS when used in GUI mode.
I assume that you have the Command Line Tools installed on your machine. If this is not the case, write the next command in a Terminal and accept the defaults:
The article consists of three parts:
At this time, there is no official installer for Octave for macOS. In order to install 4.4.1 we are going to use the Octave.app build. Go to the Download page and get the Current Release of Octave. You should end up with a file named Octave-4.4.1.dmg in your Downloads folder.
Version 4.4.1 depends on OpenJDK 11.0.2+9 which you can get from the OpenJDKarchive. Make sure that you pick the exact version mentioned before. In order to install OpenJDK 11.0.2, open a Terminal and execute the next commands:
Once you’ve installed the required version of Java, you can proceed with installing Octave. Double click on the dmg file, accept the license and drag the app to your Applications folder. Since this is a third party unsigned build, first time when you start Octave you will need to right click the app and select Open.
You’ll also need to instruct Octave to use the GnuPlot graphics backend for plotting graphics. The default qt backend seems to be pretty buggy on macOS. In order to do this, you’ll need to create a .octaverc file in your home folder and put the next two lines in this file:
A simple way to do the above is to run the next commands in a Terminal
Restart Octave in order for the above to take effect.
At this point, you should be able to use Octave normally and use the menus to select the working folder, open, save files and so on. Go to the last part of this article if you want to see an example of using the app.
At this time, there is no official installer for Octave for macOS. In order to install 5.1.0 we are going to use the Homebrew package manager. If you don’t have Homebrew installed, you can install it by running the next command in a Terminal:
Start by making sure that your Homebrew installation is up to date:
Finally, install Octave on your system:
The above command will take some time, because Octave depends on a lot of other libraries. Once the installation is finished, you can invoke the Octave interpreter with the octave command in a Terminal:
If you really want to start the GUI interface, keep in mind that, at least for version 5.1.0, this is pretty unstable, use:
You’ll also need to instruct Octave to use the GnuPlot graphical backend for plotting graphics. The default qt backend seems to be pretty buggy on macOS. In order to do this, you’ll need to create a .octaverc file in your home folder and put the next two lines in this file:
A simple way to do the above is to run the next commands in a Terminal
Restart Octave in order for the above to take effect.
At this point, you should be able to use the Octave CLI interface normally.
If you want to evaluate an existing Octave script, you can do it in a few ways. I’ll assume that you have a file named demo1.m in your current folder.
First start the interpreter and than run the script from an interpreter prompt:
The second option is to run the script when you start the interpreter and after the script is finished you will be back at the interpreter prompt:
If you just want to run a script and exit when done, simply use:
In the final part of this article I will show you how to install the Octave image processing package. This should work the same for Octave 4.4.1 or 5.1.0. Start Octave and write the next command at an Octave prompt:
The above will install the image package for Octave. You need to run this command only once after which it will remain installed on your system.
By default, Octave doesn’t load a newly installed package when you start it. In order to use an existing package, use the next command at an Octave prompt:
If you want Octave to always load an already installed package, add the load command to your .octaverc file, e.g. by running in a Terminal:
Next time when you will start Octave it will also load the image package.
Download clouds.jpg to your working folder and run the next script (I assume that you’ve already installed and loaded the image package):
This is what I see if I run the above script on my Mac in the Octave 4.4.1 app:
The current stable release is Dynare 4.6.2.
Compatible with Windows (7, 8.1, 10), MATLAB (R2009b and later) and GNU Octave (5.2.0 only, 64-bit or 32-bit)
Available as an executable installer, and as 7z and zip archives.
Dynare 4.6.2 (exe) (124 MB)[signature]
Dynare 4.6.2 (7z) (103 MB)[signature]
Dynare 4.6.2 (zip) (328 MB)[signature]
Compatible with macOS (10.11 and later, earlier versions may work but have not been tested), any 64-bit MATLAB, and GNU Octave (4.4.1 installed via https://octave-app.org). NB: This package is unsigned; to run it, you need to right click on it and select 'Open' from the menu that pops up.
Dynare 4.6.2 (pkg) (62 MB)[signature]
Several GNU/Linux distributions have official packages for Dynare:
Note that on Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint, you also need to install the dynare-matlab package if you want MATLAB support. Official packages may not correspond to the latest version of Dynare, depending on the release schedule of the distributions.If your GNU/Linux distribution does not include a Dynare package, or if it does but the package is too old, you need to recompile Dynare from source, as explained in the README.md file.
Source code, not needed by most users.
Dynare 4.6.2 (tar.xz) (17 MB)[signature]
To download older versions of Dynare, go to the release archives.
To cite Dynare, use the following:
Stéphane Adjemian, Houtan Bastani, Michel Juillard, Frédéric Karamé, Junior Maih, Ferhat Mihoubi, Willi Mutschler, George Perendia, Johannes Pfeifer, Marco Ratto and Sébastien Villemot (2011), “Dynare: Reference Manual, Version 4,” Dynare Working Papers, 1, CEPREMAP
BibTeX File
Dynare is free software, which means that it can be downloaded free of charge, that its source code is freely available, and that it can be used for both non-profit and for-profit purposes. Most of the source files are covered by the GNU General Public Licence version 3 or later (there are some exceptions to this, see the file license.txt in Dynare distribution).
The unstable version of Dynare is the version on which Dynare developers arecurrently working. It contains the latest features, but may contain bugs oreven not work at all! For this reason, most users should use the stable versionunless they really need bleeding edge features and are willing to take somerisks. It is produced every day when there is a change to the codebase.
Compatible with Windows (7, 8.1, 10), MATLAB (R2014a and later) and GNU Octave (5.2.0 only), 64-bit
Executable installer:
7z archive:
Zip archive:
Octave Macos
Compatible with macOS (10.11 and later, earlier versions may work but have not been tested), MATLAB (R2014a and later), and GNU Octave (4.4.1 installed via https://octave-app.org). NB: This package is unsigned; to run it, you need to right click on it and select 'Open' from the menu that pops up.
Snapshots are not available for GNU/Linux distributions. Users should compile from source available in the Dynare Git repository, as explained on the Dynare README.md page.
Source code, not needed by most users.
Octave Gui Mac