I've solved the problem of compiling gcl and maxima on Mandrake 8.0 and getting all the self-tests to pass. Forgive me while I waste some bandwidth in order to get this solution into the mailing list archive. I hope that will help someone in the future and maybe even prevent future bandwidth wasting. ;-) A half-dozen or so folks contacted me off list. All indicated that gcl & maxima should compile on Linux and that "make test" should pass all tests. No one had a specific solution. Some assumed that I'm running Redhat and mentioned that gcc-2.96 can cause some tests to fail. I run Mandrake 8.0 which, like Redhat, uses the "controversial" gcc-2.96 compiler. Luckily the kernel needs a working compiler. On Mandrake 8, this is in /usr/bin/kgcc and is "gcc version egcs-2.91.66". I took all this advice and read all about Redhat in h/386-linux.defs. What I needed to do (leaving out a few details) is: - configure gcl with CC=kgcc - hand craft the gcl-2.2.2_rh50linux.patch to work with gcl-2.4.0. - patch 386-linux.defs to make sure that "-static" is turned on in the "LDCC=${CC} -static" line. - make gcl with GCC=kgcc and OFLAG=-g - configure maxima with CC=kgcc - make maxima with GCC=kgcc As for those few details, I've attached my RPM spec files for gcl and maxima and the small patch files they reference. Cheerio...
Attached file: gcl.spec
Attached file: maxima.spec
Attached file: gcl-2.4.0_mdk80linux.patch
Attached file: gcl-2.4.0_mdk80linux.3.patch