Octave is a programming language for scientific computing.
You might need homebrew-cask; if you don't have it, refer to this section.
Octave.app is a project to distribute GNU Octave as a native Mac GUI application, to make it easier to install and use Octave on macOS. Note this is not an official GNU or GNU Octave project. As this distributes a compiled version of Octave, installation will be much faster.
To install using homebrew-cask run:
$ brew tap octave-app/octave-app
$ brew cask install octave-app
You can also install Octave from the official Homebrew source using the method below.
Install octave from core Homebrew (which is available by default):
$ brew install octave
Note: If brew complains about not having a formula for Octave, the following command should fix it:
$ brew tap --repair
The command below upgrades Octave and its dependencies to the latest Homebrew-supported versions:
$ brew update && brew upgrade
Octave has many dependencies which will be downloaded and installed prior to Octave. The entire installation process can take a few hours if you are compiling from source.
Note: On Snow Leopard or earlier, Octave requires an X server. You can download one from the XQuartz project.
You might find that you need to add:
setenv ("GNUTERM", "X11")
to your octaverc file, normally located at /usr/local/share/octave/site/m/startup.