[Axiom-developer] Re: fact finding.

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

On Fri, 21 Dec 2007, address@hidden wrote:

| It appears that you believe that your average user should be able to do:

open-axiom/trunk/INSTALL:

Requirements
============

OpenAxiom uses GCL (the GNU Common Lisp) for its runtime support.  So,
if you already have a running GCL (2.6.7 or 2.6.8), that is good.
Otherwise, you would need to download a dependency tarball from
OpenAxiom's download web site.  See instructions below.

OpenAxiom needs noweb for extracting its source codes.  If you don't
have running noweb utilities, you would need to either download the
dependency tarball from OpenAxiom's download web site, or separately
install them, and then proceed with configuration as detailed below.

Note that GCL and noweb are needed only to build OpenAxiom.  They are
not needed to run it.

Finally, you would need a working GNU C compiler.  It is also recommended
that you install X11 development headers and libraries, especially
Xpm.  Windows (MingW/MSYS) users do not need X11 components.  They
still need a working GNU C compiler though.

Ah, one more note:  OpenAxiom requires GNU Make.

1. GCL and noweb prerequisites
   ---------------------------

If any of GCL or noweb is missing from the environment environment
where you're building, then you need to either separately install
them, or download the dependency tarball

    open-axiom-1.0.x-dep.tar.bz2

Please, notice that GCL and noweb are needed only to *build*
OpenAxiom.  If you plan to build OpenAxiom often, then it probably is
a good idea to separately build and install those tools once for all.


If you already have GCL and noweb installed, please go to step 2.

1.a. Download the dependency tarball open-axiom-1.0.x-dep.tar.bz2

1.b. Decompress the dependency tarball

      tar jxfv open-axiom-1.0.x-dep.tar.bz2


    That should decompress the dependency tarball in a directory
named open-axiom-1.0.x.  Rename it to open-axiom-1.1.0, e.g.:

       mv open-axiom-1.0.x open-axiom-1.1.0

2. Building OpenAxiom
   ------------------

It is assumed you have already downloaded open-axiom source tarball,
e.g. open-axiom-1.1.0.tar.bz2.  

Note: If you don't have GCL or noweb in the build environment, please
make sure that you have either followed the instructions in step 1.,
or have separately installed them before proceeding.

2.a. Decompress the OpenAxiom source tarball

      tar jfxv open-axiom-1.1.0.tar.bz2

2.b. Configure OpenAxiom

It is highly recommended that you build OpenAxiom in a directory
different from the one that contains the sources.  For example, you
may create a directory sibling to open-axiom-1.1.0 and build the
system from there:

      mkdir build-oa
      cd build-oa
      ../open-axiom-1.1.0/configure

It is possible to tell configure where to put the final OpenAxiom
executables.  By default, when you just type in configure like above,
it will configure the system with prefix /usr/local.  You can instead
say where you want it to be installed, let's say /banana/space.  You
would then have typed

     ../open-axiom-1.1.0/configure --prefix=/banana/space

2.c. Make the system

Just type

       make

or

       make 2>&1 | tee build.log

if you would like to inspect the build messages later on -- but most
users probably don't.

2.d.  Have some coffee

2.e.  Have more coffee

It can take from 30min to 2 hours to build, depending on the
compute power of the build machine.

3. Installing OpenAxiom   
   --------------------

Once the build (step 2.) has gone successfully, you may optionally try
to regress-test the system -- it can take hours.

3.a. [optional]

       make check 2>&1 | tee tests.log

3.b. The system is ready to install

If you configured the system to install in a place that needs special
privilege, e.g. /usr/local that requires administrator write, please
make sure that you've gained the adequate privileges.  Then, type:

      make install

3.c. The system is ready for use

After step 3.b., your should have a script called `axiom', in
/usr/local/bin or /banana/space/bin or /whichever/prefix/you/used/bin,
ready for your.  Just type in

    axiom

in the shell.
  

4.  Enjoy
    -----

About Make
==========

OpenAxiom build system requires GNU Make.  It might theoretically be
possible to cram the Makefiles so that they can work with a large set 
of Make programs.  However, doing so will not be cost effective.  GNU 
Make has been ported to virtually any system current OpenAxiom can build
one.  In particular, OpenAxiom uses GCL, which in turns requires GCC.
GCC requires GNU Make.  GCL too requires GNU Make.  Consequently,
the GNU Make requirement is not a stringent requirement.  It just
reflects reality.

So, if you're using a system where "make" is not GNU Make, then try
"gmake" instead. 

Send comments and suggestions to address@hidden

Gabriel Dos Reis