how to re-define the HOME directory?



On 06/01/2009 02:50 PM, Oliver Kullmann wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 01, 2009 at 01:22:54PM -0500, James Amundson wrote:
>    
>> On 06/01/2009 10:07 AM, Oliver Kullmann wrote:
>>      
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> since in my research platform Maxima needs to run locally,
>>> without intrusion of the user space, I needed to do something
>>> w.r.t. the .maxima directory, and fortunately redefining the
>>> environment variable HOME when calling Maxima does the job!
>>>
>>>        
>> Maybe, but that's not the right way to do it. You want to set
>> MAXIMA_USERDIR to point to your .maxima directory. The maxima man page
>> describes the Maxima environment variables and configuration files and
>> directories. Here's what it says about MAXIMA_USERDIR:
>>
>> MAXIMA_USERDIR
>> Points to a directory for user customization files. Maxima?EUR^(TM)s default
>> search paths include MAX-
>> IMA_USERDIR. Default value: $HOME/.maximaq
>>
>>      
>
> Unfortunately this doesn't say so much, and actually it is useless (perhaps
> this is a bug):
>
> What I want is that the creation of the directory .maxima and the file
> .maxima_history happens where *I* want them to be.
>    
Well, of course that's what MAXIMA_USERDIR is supposed to do. It looks 
like there is at least one bug.
> Now maxima_history can't be influenced at all,

That's a long story, but it should be considered a bug, too. Before I do 
anything about it, though, I need to where your "maxima_history" is 
coming from. (Technically, it isn't maxima that writes maxima_history, 
but it should get fixed, anyway.) Are you using rmaxima, or something else?

--Jim Amundson