One thing that would be useful: As you work through simp.lisp,
write tests that try to reach every branch of the main
functions (addk, timesk, for example...). That would be a valuable
contribution, I think. Currently, our (so called) regression
tests are pretty much hit-or-miss.
One thing to watch for in simp.lisp: look for bugs similar to
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1372477&group_id=4933&atid=104933
They are pretty easy to spot and to fix.
It's tempting the change Maxima to make it look nicer. But it's
easy to break stuff that the testsuite doesn't catch. I've done
that lots of times. And there is code in share and elsewhere
that the testsuite doesn't even try to check. Be careful.
Barton