Since July 1996, most work on Octave has been done using a
Linux/GNU system.

If you have trouble compiling or running Octave on a Linux/GNU system,
it is very likely that the problem is with your system, or your
installation of the compiler and libraries, and not with Octave
itself.

For example, if you can compile Octave, but it crashes with a
segmentation fault right away, you probably have incompatible versions
of libc and libg++ installed, or you have a version of the dynamic
loader, ld.so, that is incompatible with your versions of the
libraries, or both.

On my development system, I am using the following software:

  * Linux kernel 2.0.6
  * gcc/g++ 2.7.2
  * libg++/libstdc++ 2.7.1.0
  * libm 5.0.5
  * libc 5.2.18
  * libncurses 3.0
  * ld.so 1.7.14

I know from experience that the versions listed above seem to work
well together, but they may not work for you, because if you have a
newer version of the kernel, you may need a newer version of the C
library.  Other than that, I don't have time to keep up with all the
various library versions (life is much too short for that), nor do I
know which combinations are supposed to work together.  That sort of
information should be clearly stated in the release notes for the
libraries.  If it is not, please ask the maintainers of the libraries
to clarify the documentation.

If you can't compile Octave, you should first check to see that your
compiler and header files are properly installed.  Do you have
multiple versions of the g++ include files on your system?  Are you
sure that your copy of g++ is finding the right set (compiling a short
program with g++ -v will tell you the search path)?

John W. Eaton
jwe@bevo.che.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Chemical Engineering

Sat Dec 14 09:44:05 1996