Packages and other user-friendly things (Was Re: solve(x/sqrt(x+2)=1, x))

> > 5) Add some easy way to load up-to-date share files from the
> > sourceforge server without requiring CVS knowledge.  The R system
> > includes functions to install and update packages (and their
> > prerequisites) so you neither have to be a systems programmer nor have
> > to reinstall the whole system every time one package is updated. This
> > requires real work, especially if it's going to be cross-platform.

We did discuss this for user supplied packages a few month ago
and most people seemed to agree that a forum, where users can download
add-on packages, would be enough. So maybe some webpage where users can
download share packages to drop into $HOME/.maxima/ is enough as well?

> Item 5 seems the most difficult since that requires quite a bit of
> work.  If we could use usocket for all Lisps, we could just do a simple
> http connection somewhere to grab the files.  But someone would need to
> define how this is all done, and someone would have to maintain each of
> the packages..  Perhaps this would be a good time to use asdf-install. 
> But we would need to be able to call tar and gzip to extract items.

We can run system commands from within maxima so maybe we can cover
all unix-like plattforms just be calling wget - shouldn't be hard to
do ...

I'm sure there also is some download tool in Windows or we might just
pack wget into the windows-installer. But as I know nothing about
Windows somebody else would have to comment on this.

But, there are tons of package management systems out there, perhaps
we need not reinvent the wheel?

HTH,
Harald