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Copyright (C) 1996-2026 The Octave Project Developers

See the file COPYRIGHT.md in the top-level directory of this
distribution or <https://octave.org/copyright/>.

Overview
--------

GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended
for numerical computations.  It provides capabilities for the
numerical solution of linear and nonlinear problems, and for
performing other numerical experiments.  It also provides extensive
graphics capabilities for data visualization and manipulation.  GNU
Octave is normally used through its interactive interface (CLI and
GUI), but it can also be used to write non-interactive programs.
The GNU Octave language is quite similar to Matlab so that most
programs are easily portable.

GNU Octave is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

GNU Octave is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with Octave; see the file COPYING.  If not, see
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Availability
------------

The latest released version of Octave is always available from
<https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/> and many mirror sites around the
world.  You may also find links to binary distributions at
<https://www.octave.org/download.html>.  The current development
sources may be found under the Source Code tab on
[Savannah](https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/octave/).

Installation
------------

Octave requires approximately 475 MB of disk storage to unpack and
compile from source (significantly more, 3.8 GB, if you compile with
debugging symbols).  Once installed, Octave requires approximately
75 MB of disk space (again, considerably more, 415 MB, if you don't
build shared libraries or the binaries and libraries include
debugging symbols).

To compile Octave, you will need a recent version of:

- [GNU Make](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/)
- [GNU G++](https://gcc.gnu.org/) or another C++17 compiler
- [GNU Fortran](https://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/), another Fortran 77
  compiler, or [f2c](http://www.netlib.org/f2c/)

Octave's Makefiles use features of GNU Make that are not present in
other versions of make.  If you use `f2c`, you will need a script
like `fort77` that works like a normal Fortran compiler by combining
`f2c` with your C compiler in a single script.

See the file INSTALL.OCTAVE or the wiki at <https://wiki.octave.org/Building>
for more detailed installation instructions.

Bugs and Patches
----------------

The files BUGS and `doc/interpreter/bugs.txi` explain the recommended
procedure for reporting bugs on the [bug tracker](https://bugs.octave.org)
or contributing patches; online resources are also available
[here](https://octave.org/support).

Documentation
-------------

* [Octave's manual](https://docs.octave.org/interpreter/) is a
  comprehensive user guide covering introductive and more advanced
  topics.
* [Octave's wiki](https://wiki.octave.org) is a user community page,
  covering various topics and answering [FAQ](https://wiki.octave.org/FAQ).
* [Octave's Doxygen](https://docs.octave.org/doxygen/) documentation
  explains the C++ class libraries.

If you notice omissions or inconsistencies in the documentation, please
report them at our bug tracker.  Specific suggestions for ways to improve
Octave and its documentation are always welcome.  Reports with patches are
even more welcome.

Additional Information
----------------------

The Octave website is <https://www.octave.org>, and there is a forum
at <https://octave.discourse.group/>.
