# General documentation for the parallel package for Octave ¶

The info version of this document is accessible, after package installation, from the Octave commandline with `parallel_doc()`.

This documentation applies to version 4.0.2 of the parallel package.

The package contains functions for explicit local parallel execution and functions for parallel execution over a cluster of machines, possibly combined with local parallel execution at each machine of the cluster.

Earlier versions of the package used Octave sessions directly generated by the `fork` system call. Since this causes problems, the current version uses newly started Octave sessions, even for local parallel execution. This causes some limitations, see Limitations of high- and medium-level functions.

The server for cluster execution is installed at GNU/Linux, but not at some other operating systems, e.g. not at Windows or macOS. The client functions for cluster execution should be installed at all systems, though.