Condensed instructions for building octave from source on ubuntu 16.04

octave_from_source.sh

# install dependencies, lzip (for extracting compressed file), and checkinstall (for easy uninstall)
sudo apt-get install gcc g++ gfortran make libblas-dev liblapack-dev libpcre3-dev libarpack2-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev epstool libfftw3-dev transfig libfltk1.3-dev libfontconfig1-dev libfreetype6-dev libgl2ps-dev libglpk-dev libreadline-dev gnuplot-x11 libgraphicsmagick++1-dev libhdf5-serial-dev openjdk-8-jdk libsndfile1-dev llvm-dev lpr texinfo libgl1-mesa-dev libosmesa6-dev pstoedit portaudio19-dev libqhull-dev libqrupdate-dev libqscintilla2-dev libqt4-dev libqtcore4 libqtwebkit4 libqt4-network libqtgui4 libqt4-opengl-dev libsuitesparse-dev texlive libxft-dev zlib1g-dev autoconf automake bison flex gperf gzip icoutils librsvg2-bin libtool perl rsync tar lzip checkinstall

# make an octave directory
cd ~
mkdir octave
cd octave

# fetch and extract files -- go to https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/
# to see if there's a more recent version
wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/octave-4.2.0.tar.lz
lzip -d octave-4.2.0.tar.lz
tar -xvf octave-4.2.0.tar

# delete tar?
rm octave-4.2.0.tar

# try install (make & checkinstall take a while)
cd octave-4.2.0
./configure && make
# checkinstall will ask for user input
sudo checkinstall

# uninstall
# sudo dpkg -r octave