From: James Amundson <amundson at fnal>
> Maxima now uses autoconf and automake, which rely on bourne shell
> scripts and make files. However, the lisp part of the build uses
> defsystem, so it is pure lisp.
>
> The older maxima build system *also* used bourne shell and make files.
> It did not use defsystem. The changes to the build system should make it
> much *easier* to port, not harder. If there are a few rough edges under
> windows, then we should identify them and work them out.
Sorry if I impuned the wisdom of using configure; I'm sure the overall
install is much more portable than it was. The Windows issues are minor
and will get solved soon.
> The one thing that I knew I was making more complicated under Windows
> was the introduction of the maxima wrapper script written in bourne
> shell. It exists so that maxima would present a consistent command-line
> user interface, regardless of lisp implementation used. Most lisps do
> not generate standalone executables, so a wrapper script was
> unavoidable. I wasn't sure what the best way around that would be under
> windows. I intentionally left xmaxima as pure tcl/tk so as to avoid that
> problem.
>
> One option for the maxima wrapper would be to replace it with a compiled
> program written in a least-common-denominator language. I'm afraid that
> would have to be C.
I think Tcl is probably a better alternative than C, in that most
people will have Tcl installed under Linux if they want xmaxima, and it
can be sourced by a freewrapped executable under Windows. It's more portable
than /bin/sh and \windows\command.com, and these are tivial scripts.
> I don't like duplicated logic, either, but I didn't see any other way.
> ***I already did the work to put the lisp-switching logic in to xmaxima
> months ago.*** In fact, if I check out xmaxima from two months ago, I
> can do this:
Yes - I was raising a flag that the currently checkin code has in
effect the -lisp option being ignored, and that in effect the
maxima.sh and the run-maxima-lisp.sh logic will have to be duplicated
if we are to restore the multi-lisp functionality to xmaxima under Windows.
I'll let you and others check in changes to that part, because I'm
not that familiar with the different lisps, but the easiest may be
to rewrite maxima.sh as maxima.tcl and just source/include that into xmaxima.
Mike