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Gnuplot

Gnuplot is "a portable command-line driven graphing utility for Linux, OS/2, MS Windows, OSX, VMS, and many other platforms". It is required for proper functioning of many of our Python tools such as the popular tmplot.py and should be installed prior to installing our Python tools.

Installing Gnuplot from source

  1. Download the latest Gnuplot source from http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot/files/.
  2. For legal reasons, Apple does not ship with the Gnu Readline library which is required for proper functioning of Gnuplot. Version 6.3 of Gnu Readline can be downloaded from here. You may visit http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html to check to see if a newer version is available since this wiki may be outdated.
  3. Once Gnu Readline is downloaded, untar the download with tar xzvf filename. For example, if the filename is readline-master.tar.gz then the full command would be tar xzvf readline-master.tar.gz.
  4. Complete the previous step for the Gnuplot source download, making sure to use the correct filename.
  5. Now cd to the new Gnu Readline folder (using the example, the folder would most likely be readline-master), and execute ./configure --prefix=/usr, then make everything, then sudo make install. At this point Gnu Readline should be fully installed. We can now install Gnuplot.
  6. cd into the Gnuplot source folder. Execute ./configure, then make, and then sudo make install. At this point Gnuplot should be fully installed and you are now ready to use our Python plotting tools.