on new buld and install system



>>>>> "James" == James Amundson <amundson@fnal.gov> writes:

    James> On Sat, 2002-05-11 at 04:21, Vadim V. Zhytnikov wrote:
    >> I've noticed also that usage(); doesn't work.
    >> I can't remember has it worked with old setup
    >> or it is broken long ago?

    James> Good question. I don't know. Anyone?

What is usage() supposed to do?  On my gcl-2.4.0/maxima 5.6 system, it
doesn't do anything.

    >> Finally I have some proposal about load command.
    >> Right now it requires explicit share sub directory
    >> load("subdir/file");
    >> Is it worth to make this command a bit smarter?
    >> In particular if no subdir is specified then load
    >> should automatically scan all share subdirectories
    >> and try to find the file in one of them.

    James> Another good question. I worried about that quite a bit, then decided
    James> that "smarter" was a bad idea. I think scanning all the subdirectories
    James> largely defeats the purpose of creating them in the first place. I'm
    James> particularly worried about the case where there are two files with the
    James> same name in different subdirectories. 

    James> Feel free to try to convince me otherwise.

A case for scanning all:  emacs/xemacs looks in all directories in
load-path, in the order given by load-path.  If they have the same
name, you lose.

For code that is distributed with maxima, I rather like not having to
know exactly where it is.  Saying load("share:file") to search for
file somewhere in the share directory is nice.  If there's a
name-clash, we can fix it.

Ray