Hi Bart,
> bartv at archimedes:~$ maxima --version
> Maxima 5.12.0
>
> bartv at archimedes:~$ dpkg --list | grep maxima-doc
> ii maxima-doc 5.12.0-1ubuntu2
>
> However, when i try to
> access the documentation for a certain command, i get an error
> saying that /usr/share/info/maxima-index.lisp could not be found:
this problem is already known and reported to the debian (and ubuntu)
bug trackers. From the bug log it appears it is fixed in
versions >=5.13.0-2 which currently are only available for the
developement version of ubuntu.
> Secondly, taken into account that our sysadmins might have to install maxima
> on quite some other computers, what is the best way to solve this
> problem? Manually installing the .deb and then each time
> unzipping and copying might be cumbersome...
Installing a newer version of ubuntu or debian is one possibility.
If that is not an option, then I recommend to backport the package:
Take the latest debian source package (or any other version you see
fit your needs) and build it with the version of ubuntu, you want
to use it on. The resulting binary packages should work on any
ubuntu system that is the same version as the one used to build them.
Once you have the binary packages built you can easily install them
on all the other computers.
HTH,
Harald