Dynare with Octave

Dynare is now able to run on GNU Octave, which is basically a free clone of Matlab.

Octave versions greater or equal to 3.0.0 are supported.

About Octave

GNU Octave is a free clone of Matlab, running under Linux, Windows and MacOS.

It normally runs in a command window, and displays graphics in separate windows (using Gnuplot).

Some ressources:

Installing Dynare with Octave

Windows

The recommended Octave distribution is the Octave/Windows VC++ 3.0.3 precompiled binaries from Octave Forge.

During installation, you will be asked which graphical backend to use. Neither of them works perfectly with Dynare at this time:

Also note that this distribution contains a nice text editor, which you can invoke with edit as you would under Matlab.

Warning: the Octave/Windows distribution has a bug which makes Octave crash everytime one types clear all (and therefore everytime one runs Dynare!). A simple workaround is to type the following command the first time you run Octave:

pkg rebuild -noauto ftp ann database

Then download Dynare from http://www.dynare.org (pick the most recent release of version 4 for Windows in the download section). The archive contains DLLs compiled for Octave.

Note: Cygwin now contains an Octave 3.0 package. However this package is slower than the standalone one, and is therefore not recommended for the moment. If you really want to use it, you will have to recompile the MEX files (see BuildingDlls).

GNU/Linux

For Debian "Lenny" or Ubuntu "Hardy Heron" or "Intrepid Ibex", see InstallOnDebianOrUbuntu.

For other distributions:

Running Dynare with Octave

First, you should run Octave.

Under Linux, at the prompt, just type:

octave

Under Windows, you should have a shortcut already installed in your Start menu.

It is also possible to run Octave under Emacs.

Then, from Octave, add the path to Dynare with the addpath command, as you would under Matlab:

addpath REPLACE_WITH_INSTALL_PATH/matlab

It is possible to autoexecute this command at each Octave start by adding it to the .octaverc startup file (under Linux, this file should be put in the home directory; under Windows, it should be put at the root of the user home under Documents and Settings).

Unless you tell it to do otherwise, Octave won't accept the short syntax when typing dynare command. In other words, to run Dynare on ramst.mod, you need to type:

dynare('ramst')

rather than:

dynare ramst

However, you can force Octave to accept the short syntax by typing the following (or by adding it to your .octaverc):

mark_as_command dynare

Current status of Dynare with Octave

Main differences between Matlab and Octave which are dealt with by Dynare