Well done, James and all! Debian package to be uploaded soon, but all
looks very good so far. Thank you all for your extraordinary work.
Take care,
James Amundson <amundson@fnal.gov> writes:
>
> Everyone,
>
> Maxima 5.9.0 has been released. I will send announcements to
> freshmeat.net, sci.math.symbolic, comp.lang.lisp and the OSCAS mailing
> list soon. Please let me know if you think of another forum for the
> announcement.
>
> I have attached the release notes, which are also available in the
> source tarball in the file NEWS.
>
> --
> James Amundson <amundson@fnal.gov>
>
>
> Release notes for Maxima 5.9.0:
>
> This is the first of a series of development releases which will
> culminate in Maxima 6.0, the first truly stable release of the new
> Maxima project. This release has known bugs; see "Known issues..."
> below. However, we believe it is stable enough for use by a wide
> audience. We are relying on bug reports from users to help us make 6.0
> the most bug-free version of Maxima ever.
>
> Changes in this release include:
>
> 1) Maxima is now compatible with ANSI Common Lisp. CMUCL, Clisp
> and GCL are fully supported.
>
> 2) Maxima has a new build system based on the GNU
> Autotools. Installation should be easier and more flexible than
> ever before.
>
> 3) The Maxima build now uses mk:defsystem from CLOCC at the Lisp
> level. mk:defsystem provides a powerful and familiar environment
> for Lisp developers.
>
> 4) Maxima has a new User Manual, which is provided as a complement
> to the detailed reference manual from earlier versions of Maxima.
>
> 5) The command-line interface has been enhanced with several
> options, including a batch mode.
>
> 6) The bundled Emacs/XEmacs modes have been improved.
>
> 7) The internal layout of source code and shared Maxima files has
> been vastly improved.
>
> 8) Precision of some numerical special functions has been
> dramatically enhanced.
>
> 9) New and improved binary packages for Windows and Linux are now
> part of the official distribution.
>
> 10) Last, but not least, many bugs have been fixed.
>
> Known issues in this release include:
>
> 1) One of the (many) tests in the Maxima test suite fails. When
> the test suite is run via "make check" this known failure (Problem
> 4 in rtest15.mac) will be listed as an expected error in the
> summary.
>
> 2) The test suite is available in xmaxima. Xmaxima should also
> flag the known failure described above as expected, but it does
> not. This behavior will be improved in a later version of
> (X)Maxima.
>
> 3) When compiled with GCL, Maxima will fail to compile functions
> when the current working directory is not writable. This will
> typically cause the test suite to fail when run from xmaxima under
> Unix-like systems because it sets the current working directory to
> the installed tests directory. The end result will look like this:
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> /* ********************** Problem 43. *************** */
> %Input is
> DESOLVE([EQN1, EQN2], [f(x), G(x)])
> x + 2 contains more than one independent variable.
> -- an error. Quitting. To debug this try DEBUGMODE(TRUE);)
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 4) The maxima command-line executable is only fully functional
> under Unix-like systems, which includes Win32+MSYS, but not plain
> Win32. Under Win32, the executable maxima.bat is available but it
> has limited functionality. (The Win32 distribution does contain
> xmaxima, however, which is fully functional under Win32.) This
> problem will be fixed in a later version of Maxima.
>
> 5) maxima.bat does not properly set the Maxima directory. This
> will cause several problems including the inability to access
> on-line help and plotting. As a workaround, set the environment
> variable MAXIMA_PREFIX to the installed location of Maxima, which
> is usually "C:/Program Files/Maxima-5.9.0". This problem will be
> fixed in a later version of Maxima.
>
> 6) The share and demo files have many problems. These problems
> will be addressed in a later release.
>
> 7) There are still many open bugs in the Maxima bug tracking
> database. See
> <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=104933&group_id=4933&func=browse>
> for details.
> _______________________________________________
> Maxima mailing list
> Maxima@www.math.utexas.edu
> http://www.math.utexas.edu/mailman/listinfo/maxima
>
>
--
Camm Maguire camm@enhanced.com
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