Maxima on debian

[Boris Veytsman <boris@plmsc.psu.edu>]

> Date: 17 May 2000 16:35:04 -0000
> From: Alberto Meroni <caeyme@vivoscuola.it>

> 2) Has someone got maxima (gnu maxima) compiled ? I could not have it 
> compiled with gcl source package ? Phreaphs someone has a slink binary 
> out there ?


I did. It is a little bit tricky, but doable. I compiled it for
potato, so you probably need to compile it yourself for slink

You need to compile gcl first. The problem is, gcl configure uses
emacs in batch mode to determine its directories. however, Debian's
emacs, unlike the regular one produces some diagnostics even with
-batch switch. Because of this, configure gets confused, and
everything goes awry.

Do the following:

1. Unpack the gcl distro in the fresh directory

2. Look at the configure script and find all emacs calls in
it. Substitute them by the values of emacs dirs in your system.

E.g. for me it was the following:

2270,2271c2270,2271
< EMACS_SITE_LISP=unknown
< EMACS_SITE_LISP=`emacs -q -batch -l conftest.el 2>&1 `
---
> EMACS_SITE_LISP=/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp
> # EMACS_SITE_LISP=`emacs -q -batch -l conftest.el 2>&1 `
2289,2290c2289,2290
< EMACS_DEFAULT_EL=`emacs -q -batch -l conftest.el 2>&1 `
< if  test -f "${EMACS_DEFAULT_EL}"  ; then true;else
2312,2318c2312,2318
< INFO_DIR=`emacs -q -batch -l conftest.el 2>&1 `
< if  test -f "${INFO_DIR}dir"  ; then true;else
< if test -f /usr/info/dir ; then
<   INFO_DIR=/usr/info/
< else true;
< fi
< fi
---
> #INFO_DIR=`emacs -q -batch -l conftest.el 2>&1 `
> #if  test -f "${INFO_DIR}dir"  ; then true;else
> #if test -f /usr/info/dir ; then
>   INFO_DIR=/usr/local/info/
> #else true;
> #fi
> #fi

3. Then follow READMEs in gcl and maxima distributions.

-- 
Good luck

-Boris
http://www.plmsc.psu.edu/~boris/