Sheldon,
> 2. I have had trouble with the rpm archive.
> I found that, if I wanted to install several different versions
> of maxima at the same time (testing the newer ones, and using the
> older ones with code that works with them), it is easier to use
> the sources.
Well, for better or worse, this is to be expected.
> So, I would still ask that the html files be included in the
> *tar.gz source. Again, why not make two:
>
> maxima-5.11.0-src-no-html.tar.gz
> maxima-5.11.0-src-with-html.tar.gz
There are already a lot of distribution files; I guess i am against
creating even more files. I think we need to choose one or the
other (recent discussion was leaning towards including the html).
> 3. Maybe a way to avoid the dependency issues with different OS's, is
> to include a spec file with the source (*.tar.gz) file so people
> can make their own packages. I was told that this is already
> possible with Ubuntu (maybe Debian), but I don't know if it is
> possible with Fedora.
There is a srpm (source rpm) in the file manager at SF.
Aside from that, it should be possible to do
make maxima.spec; rpmbuild -bb maxima.spec
(more or less) with the stuff from the tarball.
I would expect it's possible to build rpms on any rpm-based
Linux (Fedora, etc).
All the best
Robert