Maxima fails to run on Mac/SBCL (was Re: help)

aberele at condor.depaul.edu writes:
> I'm trying to install Maxima on my mac computer (OS 10.5.8).  When I try
> to run it I get an error message in Terminal.  Here is a copy of what it
> says:
>
> Maxima 5.30.0 http://maxima.sourceforge.net
> using Lisp SBCL 1.0.55.0-abb03f9
> Distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file COPYING.
> Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter.
> The function bug_report() provides bug reporting information.
>
> stdin:112:incorrect syntax: Missing ]
> Maxima encountered a Lisp error:
>
>  attempt to THROW to a tag that does not exist: MACSYMA-QUIT

That's very odd. I'm not sure exactly what's going wrong: maybe you can
help us isolate the problem a little further?

Since you've got the sbcl version, could you try running something like
the following?

  sbcl --core /path/to/maxima.core --end-runtime-options --eval '(cl-user::run)'

That's basically what the "maxima" shell script does with SBCL. This
doesn't set up paths to load up extra libraries correctly, but it should
get you to a maxima prompt (without errors about ], hopefully...)

If that works, the next thing to try might be to edit the shell script
called "maxima" (sorry, I don't know where it gets installed on the
Mac). Jump to line 199 (which starts with 'exec "sbcl" ...'): it'll look
rather similar to the one above. Make a copy of it and prepend echo to
the first so the lines look like

  echo exec "sbcl" --core "$maxima_image_base.core" ...
  exec "sbcl" --core "$maxima_image_base.core"

Now try running maxima again. It should hopefully print out exactly how
we are calling sbcl, which might show what's happened.


Rupert


PS: Sorry that this message took so long to get to the list. The mailing
    list is set so that any messages that don't come from a subscriber
    are held for moderation (to deal with spam). It seems that I and the
    other moderators forgot to check the moderation queue for 4 days or
    so (oops!).
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 315 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.math.utexas.edu/pipermail/maxima/attachments/20130506/f7d2a791/attachment.pgp>;