As of version 1.9.4, gretl requires Windows XP or higher and a processor that supports the SSE2 instruction set. SSE2 support is found in all modern processors; it is absent in AMD CPUs prior to the Athlon 64, and in Intel CPUs prior to the Pentium 4. For versions of gretl that will run on older systems, see below.
If you have the rights of a "power-user" or better on Windows, choose a self-installer from the first or second column below; just download and run the exe file. This applies to most people.
If you have no administrator rights on Windows choose a zip archive from the third column; unzip this in any location where you have write permission. Note: you must preserve the internal directory structure of the archive or gretl will not work. In unzipping programs this option may be called "enable folders". The whole archive is in a directory called gretl. For example, if you unzip the archive into a directory named c:\userdata, the gretl GUI program will be at c:\userdata\gretl\gretl.exe.
The current "snapshot" of gretl is more up to date than the release: often it will contain bug-fixes but sometimes it will contain newly introduced bugs. To see what's new in the snapshot, take a look at the Change log (the "in progress" entry).
Note: the 32-bit version of gretl will run on 64-bit Windows, but not vice versa. If you're not sure if your Windows installation is 64-bit or not you can check at the Microsoft knowledge base.
self-installer (32-bit) |
self-installer (64-bit) | OR |
zip archive (no admin rights) | |
latest release (Jul 18, 2017) |
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OR current snapshot |
The executables were cross-compiled under GNU/Linux using mingw32 and GTK for Windows (thanks Tor Lillqvist!). The free installer program is courtesy of Jordan Russell.
X-13-ARIMA-SEATS (seasonal adjustment, ARIMA models) |
x13as_install.exe OR (64-bit) x13as_install-64.exe |
X-12-ARIMA (older version of the above) |
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TRAMO/SEATS (seasonal adjustment, ARIMA models) |
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Datasets for Wooldridge, Introductory Econometrics |
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Datasets for Gujarati, Basic Econometrics |
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Datasets + scripts for Stock and Watson, Introduction to Econometrics |
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Datasets + scripts for Hill, Griffiths and Lim, Principles of Econometrics |
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Datasets for Davidson and MacKinnon, Econometric Theory and Methods |
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Datasets for Marno Verbeek's Guide to Modern Econometrics |
The above are all self-extracting installers. You must install gretl before installing the extra items.
For older systems, gretl 1.9.3 runs on Windows 2000 (and does not require SSE2), and gretl 1.6.5 is the most recent version that will run on Windows 98.
Besides English, gretl supports French, Italian, Spanish, German, Basque, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Czech, Albanian, Russian and Traditional Chinese. Normally it shouldn't be necessary to do anything special to get gretl to appear in the local language: the program comes with the full set of translations, and they should be used automatically, based on the language setting of your computer. In some circumstances, however, it may be necessary to adjust your language setting to achieve the expected effect. This can be done in the Windows control panel.
When updating an existing installation of gretl, it's a good idea to first run the uninstaller program unins000.exe, which you should find in the main gretl folder. This will ensure that you don't get odd behavior due to "stale" DLLs or Windows registry settings. Note that running the uninstaller will not touch any files you have created in the gretl/user folder, but it will erase any customizations you have made using the Preferences menu so you'll have to re-establish these when you start the new version of the program.
There's a page of advice here for anyone wanting to configure gretl for Windows to be run over a network, as in a computer lab setting.
If you want to build gretl for Windows yourself, download the gretl source package (go here to find the latest one) and take a look in the win32 sub-directory. You will find there a Makefile for the Windows version: it is actually designed for cross-compiling gretl on Linux but it shouldn't be too hard to modify it for building on Windows, particularly if you're using the mingw32 compiler.