G.1.3 External Packages

The following external packages are required:

BLAS

Basic Linear Algebra Subroutine library (http://www.netlib.org/blas). Accelerated BLAS libraries such as ATLAS (http://math-atlas.sourceforge.net) are recommeded for better performance.

LAPACK

Linear Algebra Package (http://www.netlib.org/lapack).

PCRE

The Perl Compatible Regular Expression library (http://www.pcre.org).

The following external package is optional but strongly recommended:

GNU Readline

Command-line editing library (www.gnu.org/s/readline).

If you wish to build Octave without GNU readline installed, you must use the --disable-readline option when running the configure script.

The following external software packages are optional but recommended:

ARPACK

Library for the solution of large-scale eigenvalue problems (http://forge.scilab.org/index.php/p/arpack-ng). ARPACK is required to provide the functions eigs and svds.

cURL

Library for transferring data with URL syntax (http://curl.haxx.se). cURL is required to provide the urlread and urlwrite functions and the ftp class.

FFTW3

Library for computing discrete Fourier transforms (http://www.fftw.org). FFTW3 is used to provide better performance for functions that compute discrete Fourier transforms (fft, ifft, fft2, etc.)

FLTK

Portable GUI toolkit (http://www.fltk.org). FLTK is currently used to provide windows for Octave's OpenGL-based graphics functions.

fontconfig

Library for configuring and customizing font access (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig). Fontconfig is used to manage fonts for Octave's OpenGL-based graphics functions.

FreeType

Portable font engine (http://www.freetype.org). FreeType is used to perform font rendering for Octave's OpenGL-based graphics functions.

GLPK

GNU Linear Programming Kit (http://www.gnu.org/software/glpk). GPLK is required for the function glpk.

gnuplot

Interactive graphics program (http://www.gnuplot.info). gnuplot is currently the default graphics renderer for Octave.

GraphicsMagick++

Image processing library (http://www.graphicsmagick.org). GraphicsMagick++ is used to provide the imread and imwrite functions.

HDF5

Library for manipulating portable data files (http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5). HDF5 is required for Octave's load and save commands to read and write HDF data files.

OpenGL

API for portable 2D and 3D graphics (http://www.opengl.org). An OpenGL implementation is required to provide Octave's OpenGL-based graphics functions. Octave's OpenGL-based graphics functions usually outperform the gnuplot-based graphics functions because plot data can be rendered directly instead of sending data and commands to gnuplot for interpretation and rendering.

Qhull

Computational geometry library (http://www.qhull.org). Qhull is required to provide the functions convhull, convhulln, delaunay, delaunay3, delaunayn, voronoi, and voronoin.

QRUPDATE

QR factorization updating library (http://sourceforge.net/projects/qrupdate). QRUPDATE is used to provide improved performance for the functions qrdelete, qrinsert, qrshift, and qrupdate.

SuiteSparse

Sparse matrix factorization library (http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/sparse/SuiteSparse). SuiteSparse is required to provide sparse matrix factorizations and solution of linear equations for sparse systems.

zlib

Data compression library (http://zlib.net). The zlib library is required for Octave's load and save commands to handle compressed data, including Matlab v5 MAT files.