Information concerning the new release of Maxima-5-23-2.
I downloaded the source files for Maxima-5-23-2 from sourceforge and
built rpm files for my personal repository for PCLinuxOS-2010, which has
been updated to the latest from their repositories, and this is just to
inform you of the result.
I'm using the following, which I also built from source (including GCL):
wxMaxima 0.8.7
wxWidgets: 2.8.11
Unicode support: yes
Maxima version: 5.23.2
Lisp: GNU Common Lisp (GCL) GCL 2.6.8 (a.k.a. GCL)
Test suite run from Xmaxima gives:
No unexpected errors found out of 8,720 tests.
real time : 505.000 secs
run-gbc time : 431.350 secs
child run time : 1.660 secs
gbc time : 43.090 secs
Test suite run from wxMaxima gives:
No unexpected errors found out of 8,720 tests.
real time : 892.960 secs
run-gbc time : 619.790 secs
child run time : 3.300 secs
gbc time : 55.380 secs
My hardware is an older Pentium4 system running at 3.2Ghz.
Before I say anything about problems, let me say that I appreciate all
of the effort that goes into Maxima that makes it such a useful tool for
a casual mathematics user like me. I know it takes a lot of effort to
produce and maintain Maxima.
I use Maxima to work out problems that I can later put into Java code
because I can usually debug the math in Maxima easier than I can in the
Java code, although I have found it necessary to double-check what
Maxima produces in some cases. I've continued to monitor the list
messages for my own edification but I've rarely commented because I feel
my mathematics abilities are far below most of the users of Maxima I see
posting on the list. I have been looking for progress concerning the bug
related to 0^0 and sum(), but I've not seen any so I'm reiterating my
findings related to the problem.
Here are the test commands in wxmaxima-0.8.7 with Maxima-5.23.2
concerning the bug that shows up for 0^n and their output:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
kill(all)$
n:5;
sum(0^i, i, 0, n);
0^0;
0^1;
0^i;
assume (i >= 0);
0^i;
(%o1) 5
0^0 has been generated
-- an error. To debug this try: debugmode(true);
0^0 has been generated
-- an error. To debug this try: debugmode(true);
(%o4) 0
(%o5) 0
(%o6) [i>=0]
(%o7) 0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above sequence of commands and their resulting output is exactly the
same as I got for Maxima-5-22.0.
From what I can tell from my end it looks as though the problems
associated with 0^0 and sum() are going to be with us for awhile, so
maybe there should be a note added to the documentation for sum() (and
anywhere else that's appropriate) warning users of the bug so they can
try to work around it if they find it necessary. Just my $0.02 worth...
Thanks again to all of the Maxima developers for all of the effort,
Paul Bowyer