A few questions about Maxima



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||   From   : "Daniele Tampieri" <daniele.tampieri at ieee.org>
||   To     : <maxima at math.utexas.edu>
||   Sent   : Wednesday, March 16, 2011 10:02 AM
||   Subject: A few questions about Maxima
||
||   Dear Sirs,
||
||   I started to use Maxima inside Emacs a few time ago,
||   and I would like to ask a few questions on how contribute
||   to the project at best.
||
|| 1)What are the basic steps a supporter/contributor should
||   take (inscription to comunity/newsgroup and so on...)?
||
|| a)Do there exists a manual for the developer advicing
||   on the best way to write code for the project?
||
|| b)Do Maxima rely on particular libraries for its
||   development? What are those libraries?
||
|| 2)Is there any project aimed to implement the chain rule
||   of order n>1 in Maxima by using the Fa? di Bruno Formula?
||
||   Thank you for your kind attention.
||
||   Best regards
||   Daniele Tampieri
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||   From   : "David Billinghurst" <dbmaxima at gmail.com>
||   To     : <maxima at math.utexas.edu>; <daniele.tampieri at ieee.org>
||   Sent   : Wednesday, March 16, 2011 4:04 PM
||   Subject: Re: [Maxima] A few questions about Maxima
||
||   On 16/03/2011 7:02 PM, Daniele Tampieri wrote:
||>
||>  Dear Sirs,
||>
||>  I started to use Maxima inside Emacs a few time ago,
||>  and I would like to ask a few questions on how contribute
||>  to the project at best.
||>
||>  1) What are the basic steps a supporter/contributor should
||>    take (inscription to comunity/newsgroup and so on...)?
||
||   I suggest:
||
|| * subscribe to the mailing list
||
|| * build maxima from cvs source using at least two different
||   lisps. This is quite easy on many linux distributions.
||   It is more difficult on windows, but even I can do it
||   now. ;-)
||
|| * roll up your sleeves and start somewhere
||
|| o look through the bug database or the mailing list archives,
||   find some bugs that look simple to fix or that you find
||   interesting, debug them and try and fix them.  This is the
||   hard at first.
||
|| o post any bug fixes to the list for discussion.  If they
||   look OK then a maintainer will commit them for you
||
|| o you could also try and understand how some part of maxima
||   works, then add some comments to the code describing the
||   algorithms used
||
|| o there are undocumented packages and functions.  A beginner
||   can make a contribution here as little knowledge of the
||   internals is required.
||   google
||  "site:www.math.utexas.edu/pipermail/maxima undocumented"
||   for a few examples.
||
|| o additions to the testsuite are welcome, but please discuss
||   before going to a significant effort
||
|| * build up some credibility with the maxima community, then
||   if you are still interested you can request to become a
||   maintainer yourself.  The barriers are fairly low, but we
||   want to know that you won't do anything stupid.
||
||> a) Do there exists a manual for the developer advicing
||>    on the best way to write code for the project?
||
||  No.  I can only suggest you look at code, read the mailing
||  list archive and ask questions

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

||
||  From   : "David Billinghurst" <dbmaxima at gmail.com>
||  ...
||  I suggest:
||  ...
||* build maxima from cvs source using at least two different
||  lisps. This is quite easy on many linux distributions.
||  It is more difficult on windows, but even I can do it
||  now. ;-)

    Dear Mr. Billinghurst,

    Would you, please, give to an absolute beginner, like myself,
    some advice to try the Windows build?

    Sincerely,

    Petros Zimourtopoulos
    http://www.antennas.gr