Has anyone successfully compiled Octave stable (2.1.73)? I got the tarball (octave-2.1.73.tar.bz),
and ran "configure --prefix=/usr && make". But I got

undefined reference to `__cxa_get_exception_ptr'

I would appreciate for any help.
yur

If you're prepared to try the more recent developmental version, try downloading the octave package from Fedora 6 Extras and using that.

Your best bet for compatibility is to download the source RPM for FC6 and install and build that on your CentOS5 box:

  yum -i install rpm-build gcc
  rpm -i http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/fedora.redhat/linux/extras/6/SRPMS/octave-2.9.9-1.fc6.src.rpm
  rpmbuild -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/octave.spec

That last command will probably tell you a lot of things you'll need to install before it will build. Yum should get you out of trouble.

Once it's built, you may also find it needs other things installed before octave will install. Again, Yum should be able to help.

Well, it complains about failed dependencies:

hdf5-devel is needed by octave-2.9.9-1.i386
fftw-devel is needed by octave-2.9.9-1.i386
ufsparse-devel is needed by octave-2.9.9-1.i386
glpk-devel is needed by octave-2.9.9-1.i386

Even after all the dependencies are satisfied (by getting some rpms from DAG and others compiled from Fedora 6 sources),
I still get

undefined reference to `__cxa_get_exception_ptr'

I am convinced now that there are some issues with gcc, libraries, or autoconfig. I hope they will be resolved in the near future.

yur

Hmmm. Googling "octave __cxa_get_exception_ptr" doesn't seem to help much, either.

Mind you, some of the output suggests C++ to me. Do you have the C++ libraries loaded?

yum install libstdc++

If that fails, perhaps

yum install compat-libstdc++

Note this thread on the Octave support forum: https://www.cae.wisc.edu/pipermail/octave-maintainers/2006-June/000309.html

If that doesn't work, perhaps fetch the 2.1.x version of Octave from Fedora Extras 4 (or perhaps 5)? You might be able to use the binary, and if not: try rebuilding that one from the source RPM.

Sorry, I'm out of suggestions after that.

Thanks for your help, but I cannot deal with the error. Both stdlibc++ and compat-libstdc++ (2 versions) are already installed. Tried to remove 1 and both versions of compat-libstdc++, tried various other possibilities, ... but still I get "__cxa_get_exception_ptr" error. Well, I guess I will wait a while until further RHEL5/CentOS5 updates are released.

yur

I just found this thread after googling for help on octave centos5. I didn't see any simple "solutions", so here goes:

It turns out that GNU f77 (also known as g77) will not be updated beyond 3.4.6, and the 3.4.6 libraries are not quite compatible with 4.1.x. libraries that are installed as part of the current Centos gcc/g++ development tools. This is the cause of the "__cxa_get_exception_ptr" error as it tries to get the C/C++ and FORTRAN files to play nice together.

However, it turns out that GNU gfortran (with the same version libraries as g++) works very nicely with the octave source, so...

After poking around a little bit in the "configure" file in the octave base directory, I found that you can compile octave 2.1.73 and 2.9.13 if you first execute the following:

The following appeared near the end of the configure output:



That's the biggie: the Fortran libraries.

Then just

...wait for a while...

How sweet it is to see the following (with octave-2.9.13)

(With 2.1.73, it just quietly quits, saying "make[1]: Leaving directory `/...yourpathhere.../octave-2.1.73'" with no error messages.)

See footnote.

Assuming that your "make" concluded satisfactorily


(Of course you can also put in any other config or make options that you usually use.)

Regards,

Dave

Footnote:
My systems: Centos 5 (32-bit version) installed on several AMD 64 platforms.
Actually, I execute the following to have a record of the "make" process that I can look at later with a text editor:



Then, in another window I follow the progress by



IWFM-YMMV ( It Works For Me---Your Mileage May Vary)

I successfully compiled 2.9.14 with gfortran (instead of g77) following your instruction.

Thank you.

yur

Just encountered the same link problem with octave 3.2.3. The configure script doesn't appear to have a --with-f77 flag, but the following worked fine for me:

./configure F77="gfortran" FFLAGS="-O -mieee-fp"

This is a slightly different version but the epel repository has octave-3.0.5-1.el5 (as well as the package octave-forge). It runs fine on my machines. There's a gui called qt-octave, which provides a nice front-end if you want one. The qt-octave binaries available here work well.
Cheers,