Windows build (was: A few questions about Maxima)

2011/3/17 David Billinghurst <dbmaxima at gmail.com>:
> On 17/03/2011 5:03 PM, petrosez at gmail.com wrote:
>
>     Would you, please, give to an absolute beginner, like myself,
>     some advice to try the Windows build?
>
> Petros,
>
> The full instructions to build an installable package are in the
> INSTALL.win32 file
> http://maxima.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/maxima/maxima/INSTALL.win32?revision=1.12
> You don't need all the software listed in "External Requirements" if allyou
> want is to build a maxima executable. Some of it is required for
> documentation and some for the installer.
>
> There are several ways to build under windows.
> a) You need to choose a lisp system, including gcl, ccl and clisp.
> b) You can use a make under a unix shell - msys or cygwin - or try a
> lisp-based build.
>
> I personally use:
>
> clisp under cygwin.? All the dependencies are available as cygwin packages
> and the unix build instructions just work.? However, maxima under clisp is
> relatively slow and you also have the overhead of cygwin.
> gcl under msys.? Getting a gcl working? under windows is a problem, as only
> specific versions of gcc work.? The resulting maxima is much faster and this
> is used for the current windows distribution.? Once your system is set up
> correctly then subsequent builds are easy.
>
> There are recent reports of success using ccl.? I haven't tried it.

The instructions for building maxima with gcl are really useless. It
is true that specific versions of gcc and binutils are required.
However, these versions of gcc and binutils are no longer available
for download at the mingw sourceforge site. I have not been able to
compile gcl with gcc 4.5.2, which is the latest version available with
mingw. It is almost impossible to create a mingw environment in which
you can build gcl from scratch on windows (well, can't do it, maybe
others will have more luck). This is in my opinion the most important
reason why maxima should not be using gcl windows.

I have created a branch on github for building a windows maxima
installer with ccl on github: https://github.com/andrejv/Maxima-CAS

The instructions for building are also updated for ccl:
https://github.com/andrejv/Maxima-CAS/blob/windows-ccl/INSTALL.win32

Andrej