It took me some time to figure out a way to enable functionality for sparse matrices in Octave. Initially, the configure script was unable to find the location where the sparse matrix libraries are present. I had to specify the paths in src/octave.mk like this:
--with-umfpack-includedir='$(HOST_INCDIR)' \
--with-umfpack-libdir='$(HOST_LIBDIR)' \
--with-cxsparse-includedir='$(HOST_INCDIR)' \
--with-cxsparse-libdir='$(HOST_LIBDIR)' \
Manually specifying the paths worked, and Octave was built with the appropriate CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS. The configure details of the libraries which add the functionality of sparse matrices in Octave are given below:
AMD CPPFLAGS: -I/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/include
AMD LDFLAGS: -L/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/lib
AMD libraries: -lamd
CAMD CPPFLAGS: -I/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/include
CAMD LDFLAGS: -L/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/lib
CAMD libraries: -lcamd
CCOLAMD CPPFLAGS: -I/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/include
CCOLAMD LDFLAGS: -L/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/lib
CCOLAMD libraries: -lccolamd
COLAMD CPPFLAGS: -I/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/include
COLAMD LDFLAGS: -L/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/lib
COLAMD libraries: -lcolamd
CXSPARSE CPPFLAGS: -I/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/include
CXSPARSE LDFLAGS: -L/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/lib
CXSPARSE libraries: -lcxsparse
UMFPACK CPPFLAGS: -I/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/include
UMFPACK LDFLAGS: -L/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/lib
UMFPACK libraries: -lumfpack
CHOLMOD CPPFLAGS: -I/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/include
CHOLMOD LDFLAGS: -L/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/lib
CHOLMOD libraries: -lcholmod
Even if Octave is built this way, you are likely to see some errors like the one below:
dyld: Library not loaded: libcholmod.so
Referenced from: /Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/bin/octave
Reason: image not found
Trace/BPT trap: 5
The hint to solve this came from Alexander Hansen. He suggested that /Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/bin/octave wants to link “libcholmod.so”, which would be /Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/lib/libcholmod.so . When I did otool -L /Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/bin/octave, I saw that the sparse matrix libraries like libcholmod.so and friends had just the names in the list of links, which should have been actual absolute paths. “otool” is a command that displays specified parts of object files or libraries.
One solution which seemed valid to me was to change the install names of these dynamic shared libraries. Fortunately there is already a tool in Mac OS X called “install_name_tool” to do this job. The dynamic library libcholmod.so can be made visible to octave by the following command:
install_name_tool -change "libcholmod.so" "/Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/lib/libcholmod.so" /Users/mac6-user1/mxe/mxe-octave-anirudha/usr/x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.1/bin/octave
I also had to recompile Octave with a new LDFLAG in order to reserve enough space for changing all dynamic shared library paths. I added this in the src/octave.mk file:
LDFLAGS=-Wl,-headerpad_max_install_names
There are a few other libraries which have this error, and can be fixed by following the above procedure. Finally when all the install names in the faulty libraries/object files are fixed, Octave is ready to be launched.
GNU Octave: Improve Binary Packaging 