Octave

Octave is a programming language for scientific computing.

Prerequisite

You might need homebrew-cask, if you don't have it refer to this section.

Installation

Homebrew Octave.app

Octave.app is a project to distribute GNU Octave as a native Mac GUI application, to make it easier to install and use Octave on macOS. Note this is not an official GNU or GNU Octave project. As this distibutes a compiled version of Octave, installation will be much faster.

To install using homebrew-cask run:

$ brew tap octave-app/octave-app
$ brew cask install octave-app

Homebrew official

You can also install Octave from the offical homebrew source using the method below.

Import the scientific computing packages and install necessary packages:

$ brew tap homebrew/science
$ brew install gcc
$ brew install octave

Note: If brew complains about not having a formula for Octave, the following command should fix it:

$ brew tap --repair

The command below upgrades Octave and its dependencies to the latest Homebrew-supported versions:

$ brew update && brew upgrade

Octave has many dependencies which will be downloaded and installed prior to Octave. The entire installation process can take a few hours. Note: On Snow Leopard, Octave requires a X server. If you install without, Homebrew will guide you to the XQuartz project where you can download this.

You might find that you need to add:

setenv ("GNUTERM", "X11")

to your octaverc file, normally located at /usr/local/share/octave/site/m/startup.