Hi Eric,
Building Octave from source is not too complicated. You can use checkinstall -D to make a package so you can distribute to friends or other computers in the network.
I published in my blog instructions:
http://linuxpixies.blogspot.com/2011/05/building-octave-34-on-debian-sid.htmlI don't know if octave still fails to build with the latest gcc, but you can try also the latest gcc.
Cheerios,
Oz