(octave.info)External Packages

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E.1.3 External Packages
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The following external packages are required:

BLAS
     Basic Linear Algebra Subroutine library.  Accelerated BLAS
     libraries such as OpenBLAS (<https://www.openblas.net/>) or ATLAS
     (<http://math-atlas.sourceforge.net>) are recommended for best
     performance.  The reference implementation
     (<http://www.netlib.org/blas>) is slow, unmaintained, and suffers
     from certain bugs in corner case inputs.

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

PCRE
     The Perl Compatible Regular Expression library
     (<https://www.pcre.org>).

   The following external package is optional but strongly recommended:

GNU Readline
     Command-line editing library (<https://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
     (<https://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
     (<https://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
     (<https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig>).
     Fontconfig is used to manage fonts for Octave’s OpenGL-based
     graphics functions.

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

GLPK
     GNU Linear Programming Kit (<https://www.gnu.org/software/glpk>).
     GPLK is required for the function ‘glpk’.

gl2ps
     OpenGL to PostScript printing library
     (<https://www.geuz.org/gl2ps/>).  gl2ps is required for printing
     when using OpenGL-based graphics toolkits (currently either FLTK or
     Qt).

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
     (<https://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5>).  HDF5 is required for Octave’s
     ‘load’ and ‘save’ commands to read and write HDF data files.

Java Development Kit
     Java programming language compiler and libraries.  The OpenJDK free
     software implementation is recommended
     (<http://openjdk.java.net/>), although other JDK implementations
     may work.  Java is required to be able to call Java functions from
     within Octave.

LLVM
     Compiler framework, (<https://www.llvm.org>).  LLVM is required for
     Octave’s experimental just-in-time (JIT) compilation for speeding
     up the interpreter.

OpenGL
     API for portable 2-D and 3-D graphics (<https://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.

PortAudio
     PortAudio (<http://www.portaudio.com/>) provides a very simple API
     for recording and/or playing sound using a simple callback function
     or a blocking read/write interface.  It is required for the audio
     processing functions ‘audioplayer’, ‘audiorecorder’, and
     ‘audiodevinfo’.

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

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

QScintilla
     Source code highlighter and manipulator; a Qt port of Scintilla
     (<http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/qscintilla>).
     QScintilla is used for syntax highlighting and code completion in
     the GUI.

Qt
     GUI and utility libraries (<https://www.qt.io>).  Qt is required
     for building the GUI. It is a large framework, but the only
     components required are the GUI, core, and network modules.

SuiteSparse
     Sparse matrix factorization library
     (<http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/davis/suitesparse.html>).
     SuiteSparse is required to provide sparse matrix factorizations and
     solution of linear equations for sparse systems.

SUNDIALS
     The SUite of Nonlinear and DIfferential/ALgebraic Equation Solvers
     (<https://computation.llnl.gov/projects/sundials>) is required for
     the Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) solvers ‘ode15i’ and
     ‘ode15s’.

zlib
     Data compression library (<https://zlib.net>).  The zlib library is
     required for Octave’s ‘load’ and ‘save’ commands to handle
     compressed data, including MATLAB v5 MAT files.