Prerequisites

I prefer Homebrew as package manager Installed as per brew.sh Homebrew requires xcode and for xcode license to be accepted.

Installation

This will take the latest version available as a package

# list available
brew search octave
# isntall latest (5.1.0_8 at time of writing)
brew install octave

Installs many dependencies but most are keg-only dependencies (i.e. not symlinked to /usr/local so visible only to the other homebrew apps) with many caveats (read the caveats, nothing bad initially). lso installs python3 if not present.

% which python3
/usr/local/bin/python3
# confirmed it's using homebrew's install

Quick installation tests

$> octave

octave:1> x=linspace(0,1)
octave:2> y=2*x
octave:3> plot(y)

Verify that plot’s window opens okay.