OS X PPC Maxima



> I appreciate your reply...but still have some questions if you may.
> You can build it from source relatively easily, I think, if you have a
> lisp.
> What is the suitable lisp for me? please recommend a pecise filename so
> that I download
> and install.
>   (I get mine via Fink.)
> I installed fink and tried downloading and installing maxima with cmul and
> it was successful i guess..but I couldnot get the maxima to work!!! or let
> me say did not know how or where to start!
>

I'm sorry that I can't say a lot more than is at the page below; I just
followed its instructions.

What you *do* need to do is make sure you actually have the lisp.  CMUCL or
whatever, installed via Fink, would live in

/sw/bin/cmucl

most likely.  Then do step 6 in the web page.  Then step 7, but instead of

configure --with-cmucl=/usr/local/bin/lisp

probably do

configure --with-cmucl=/sw/bin/cmucl

Once you finish all that, you should be able to run

maxima-x.y.z/maxima-local

and have Maxima.


>  The page
> http://pangea.stanford.edu/~schmitt/maxima.html has good instructions,
> though sometimes
> I followed all these instructions in one trial. But the CMUL, all the
> sourcefiles( suitable for my processor) failed  to set up.
>  I have to do ./bootstrap first (thanks to Barton
> Willis for this tip).
> I'm afraid I have no idea about this..what is it and how can I perform it?
>

I don't know exactly what this is - sometimes before I did the "make", I had
to do the command

./bootstrap

(while I was in the maxima directory).


>    You don't necessarily have to use CMUCL, but
> then you have to do the correct configure command.
> where do i find these?
> Ironically, another way to get Maxima (slightly out of date) for this
> platform is to download Sage for this platform, and then use the
> command
>
> sage -maxima
> sage is a download-install software like fink??
>
>
For your platform, you would download at

http://sagemath.org/mirror/osx/powerpc/sage-4.6.2-OSX-32bit-10.4-PPC-G4-PowerMacintosh-Darwin.dmg


Warning!  You would be downloading and unpacking a very large file just to
get Maxima!  But it should work - once you've unpacked it, cd into the sage
directory and do

./sage -maxima

and you should have Maxima 5.22.1.  We usually are about six months behind
Maxima, but unless you are using cutting-edge Maxima functionality it should
be fine for ordinary use.

Good luck!