Re: Installation of Octave on MacBook Pro under OS X Mountain Lion

[Ben Abbott]

On Apr 12, 2013, at 2:08 PM, Michael Farmer wrote:

> Hi,
> 
>               I have for some time been attempting to install "Octave'" on my 
> MacBook Pro (OS X 10.8.3, 4GB, 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5) with little success. 
> My initial attempt was by using MacPorts which at one point appeared to be 
> succeeding only to end in a message "Error: the following dependencies were 
> not installed ……."
> 
>       In desperation I Googled "Octave Problems with Mac OS X" and found a 
> conversation between Barry Fitzgerald and Stuart Edwards  at:-
> 
> 
> http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Octave-Problem-with-Mac-OS-X-td4292095.html
> 
> 
>  which ultimately resulted in success, so I thought, give this a try!!!
> 
> 
>       Having followed the procedure given I arrived at a point where I had 
> both an Octave and Gnuplot icon in my applications folder. Upon clicking the 
> Octave icon, I consistently get a message in a pop-up window which says " 
> Octave.app is damaged and should be moved to the Trash". I have tried 
> deleting both Octave and Gnuplot by dragging their icons from the 
> Applications folder to the Trash, deleting the downloaded .dmg file and 
> starting from scratch. The file (octave-3.4.0-i386.dmg) was downloaded from:-
> 
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/octave/files/Octave%20MacOSX%20Binary/2011-04-21%20binary%20of%20Octave%203.4.0/
> 
> 
>               I realise that the most probable cause of my problem is simple 
> ignorance on my part but I hope someone can point me in the right direction.
> 
>       Thanks,
> 
> 
>       Mick Farmer

Lukas has already given you good advice.  But I'll mention we have a wiki page 
on Octave and MacOS X.

        http://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_MacOS_X

At the bottom of that page is a warning about the sourceforge binaries.  They 
will not run for you on MacOS 10.8.  Since Homebrew has dropped support 
(temporarily?) for Octave, your choices are to use Macports (if you have 
trouble, please report the problem to the Macports guys), or Fink.  At present, 
Fink has the latest version available (3.6.4) and Macports is a bit behind 
(3.6.3).   If you encounter problems with Fink installing Octave, please report 
the problem to Fink guys.  You are free to report it here as well, but you are 
likely to get a quicker response on from Fink.

Ben