Octave & gnuplot as alternative for Matlab on Mac OSX

To save some money over Matlab Student Edition, I decided to try out free stuff and bumped upon Octave. You can download it from here Click

Note I have Mac OS X Lion 10.7

This program got installed successfully. You just need to click on install package.

Now, since we need to plot results, Octave uses GNUPLOT as is plotting tool. You can download that from here Click

The installation for GNUPLOT is tricky. So here goes some step by step method.

1. Download gnuplot program.

2. Locate the folder in your Terminal

3. Inside the folder execute following commands

• $./configure --exec-prefix=/usr
• $make
• $sudo make install

If you see following error after "make" command, the follow Step 4 else, you are all set.

ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64

collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

make[3]: *** [gnuplot] Error 1

make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1




4. This error I guess is because the program gnuplot has different variable settings which will need to be updated. Use the following set of commands to install. It worked for me after lot of try and hope it works for you too. The reference for this solution is here . Thanks to him.







$export LDFLAGS=-m32
$export CFLAGS=-m32
$./configure -with-readline=bsd --without-tutorial --without-x --exec-prefix=/usr
$make
$sudo make install

Now, You may need to install Aquaterm too. This is used for plotting. The download link is here 

To have user interface like Matlab, please go ahead and install QtOctave here . This should make your life much easier.


I have just tried to compile the steps for some who might be struggling the same as I did and if there's any corrections you would like to make to this article, please drop me a link at mr.amitkc@gmail.com . It will help all.


Thank You
Take Care