gnuplot arguments in a Homebrew installation

Question

Upon installing gnuplot on my Mac with Homebrew I noticed that it passes many arguments to the configure file. More precisely, this is the output I was getting on the terminal

$ brew install gnuplot
==> Downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/gnuplot/gnuplot/4.6.3/gnuplot-4.6.3.tar.gz
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/gnuplot-4.6.3.tar.gz
==> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/gnuplot/4.6.3 --with-readline=/usr/local/opt/readline --with-gd=/usr/local/opt/gd --disable-wxwidgets --without-cairo --without-latex --without-tutorial

Then I understood why what I had on my Mac was such a poorer version of what I have on my Ubuntu. Therefore, browsing the net I found that for being able to use the wxt terminal I need to add the --wx flag for the installation. Moreover it was suggested to use also --pdf and --with-x. Visually parsing the output I had on screen (which I pasted above), I made up other flags, such as --cairo and --tutorial, and I got the following output

$ brew install gnuplot --wx --cairo --pdf --with-x --tutorial
==> Downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/gnuplot/gnuplot/4.6.3/gnuplot-4.6.3.tar.gz
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/gnuplot-4.6.3.tar.gz
==> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/gnuplot/4.6.3 --with-readline=/usr/local/opt/readline --with-pdf=/usr/local/opt/pdflib-lite --with-gd=/usr/local/opt/gd --without-latex --without-tutorial
==> make
==> make install
�  /usr/local/Cellar/gnuplot/4.6.3: 49 files, 5.4M, built in 37 seconds

Now my question is: where the heck could I find a list of acceptable arguments to use for a Homebrew installation, such as the one here for gnupot? Moreover, somehow it didn't accept my --tutorial :(

Answer 1

You can run brew options <formula> to get the list of options for a given formula. For example, for gnuplot:

$ brew options gnuplot