See the file COPYRIGHT.md in the top-level directory of this distribution or https://octave.org/copyright/.

Overview

GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides capabilities for the numerical solution of linear and nonlinear problems, and for performing other numerical experiments. It also provides extensive graphics capabilities for data visualization and manipulation. GNU Octave is normally used through its interactive interface (CLI and GUI), but it can also be used to write non-interactive programs. The GNU Octave language is quite similar to Matlab so that most programs are easily portable.

GNU Octave is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

GNU Octave is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Octave; see the file COPYING. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Availability

The latest released version of Octave is always available from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/ and many mirror sites around the world. You may also find links to binary distributions at https://www.octave.org/download.html. The current development sources may be found under the Source Code tab on Savannah.

You are encouraged to verify the Octave installation file you download (such as octave-11.1.0.tar.xz) as follows:

First, ensure that you are downloading from the official Octave website, or from a GNU mirror linked from the official Octave website.
Next, download the corresponding signature file for the installation file you downloaded, for example octave-11.1.0.tar.xz.sig.
Next, run the command
gpg --keyserver hkps://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys B05F05B75D36644B

to import John W. Eaton's public key (this needs to be done only once).
Verify the integrity of the file you downloaded with a command like
gpg --verify octave-11.1.0.tar.xz.sig
If all is well, then the output should say
gpg: Good signature from "John W. Eaton <jwe@gnu.org>
If the file you downloaded was corrupted or changed by anyone else, then the output will say
gpg: BAD signature from "John W. Eaton <jwe@gnu.org>"

If so, you should not install Octave from that file, but should start over.

Installation

Building Octave from source requires approximately 475 MB of disk space (or approximately 3.8 GB with debugging symbols). Once installed, Octave uses approximately 75 MB of disk space (or approximately 415 MB if shared libraries are not built or binaries include debugging symbols).

To compile Octave, you will need a recent version of:

GNU Make
GNU G++ or a different C++17 compiler
GNU Fortran, a different Fortran 77 compiler, or f2c

Octave's Makefiles use features of GNU Make that are not present in other versions of make. If you use f2c, you will need a script like fort77 that works like a normal Fortran compiler by combining f2c with your C compiler in a single script.

See the file INSTALL.OCTAVE or the wiki at https://wiki.octave.org/Building for more detailed installation instructions.

Bugs and Patches

The files BUGS and doc/interpreter/bugs.txi explain the recommended procedure for reporting bugs on the bug tracker or contributing patches; online resources are also available here.

Documentation

Octave's manual is a comprehensive user guide covering introductive and more advanced topics.
Octave's wiki is a user community page, covering various topics and answering FAQ.
Octave's Doxygen documentation explains the C++ class libraries.

If you notice omissions or inconsistencies in the documentation, please report them at our bug tracker. Specific suggestions for ways to improve Octave and its documentation are always welcome. Reports with patches are even more welcome.

Additional Information

The Octave website is https://www.octave.org, and there is a forum at https://octave.discourse.group/.