Installing additional packages in GNU Octave

 Guest post by Sneha Das, BMSIT, FSMK

Octave is a versatile computational tool, with multi-faceted functionality. To make the fullest use of this tool, there are various packages that needs to be installed. The packages in octave are equivalent to toolboxes in matlab.

To install octave packages

• If the desired package to be installed is available in the ubuntu repository, then
  - open the terminal
  - type 'sudo apt-get install octave-name; name is the name of the octave package. If the
  install is unsuccessful, errors appear in the terminal. Else nothing appears.

If the package is not there in the repository

• Download the package's .tar.gz file from http://octave.sourceforge.net/packages.php
• Don't extract the .tar.gz file.
• Open Octave by typing 'sudo octave' in the terminal.
  - the working directory should be the directory where the file is stored.
  So type 'cd directory' to change the working directory.
  - Then install the package by typing the command 'pkg install name.tar.gz'