The documentation for which version of which lisp to use with Maxima has
been sorely lacking. As a step toward fixing the situation, I just added
the following file to CVS. Comments are welcome.
--Jim
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Preliminary notes on lisp implementations for Maxima:
clisp, CMUCL and GCL are supported by Maxima. Ports to other ANSI
lisps should be straightforward and are welcome; please contact the
developers if you are interested in working on a port.
clisp
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clisp includes GNU readline support, so Maxima will have
advanced command-line editing facilities when built with it.
clisp versions: Maxima will fail to build with 2.26 because of a bug
in clisp. 2.28 is known to work.
CMUCL
-----
CMUCL is the fastest option for Maxima on platforms where it
is available. Unfortunately, it does not include readline support.
CMUCL versions: Maxima will build with CMUCL 18c, but will hang on
some run-time operations. 18d is known to work.
GCL
---
GCL was once the preferred platform for Maxima. This is no
longer the case. Building GCL can be difficult. GCL versions starting
with 2.5.0 can be built with readline support.
n.b.: At the time of this writing, the build is broken with GCL, but
the developers are working to fix the problem.
GCL versions: 2.4.1 and 2.5.0 should work. Since 2.5.0 is under
development, it is probably best to stick with 2.4.1.