Harald Geyer <harald at lefant.net> writes:
> Hi Nicolas!
>
> Questions about the Debian package are best answered by the Debian
> Maintainer, but I'll try to give an answer nevertheless...
>
>> there is a package maxima-src in the Debian package system. However, as
>> much as I see I cannot build maxima from there (using SBCL) because
>> essential files are missing (e.g. "configure.lisp",
>> "src/maxima-build.lisp").
>
> Yes, maxima-src is a binary Debian package containing the maxima lisp
> source. If you want to compile an new maxima package under Debian you
> should get the Debian source package with "apt-get source maxima".
>
>> What is the idea of having this source package then?
>
> I guess it's the "source is documentation" philosophy. Also you can
> load modified lisp files from src into a precompiled maxima binary,
> so having the sources around for easy installation and modification
> might be nice.
>
> HTH,
> Harald
OK, this makes sense. For my purpose (compiling and loading Maxima as a
library into SBCL), this setup is not really useful. I think that I will
continue using a CVS version then.
Thank you,
Nicolas