Read Me

FriCAS is a fork of Axiom system maintained by Waldek Hebisch.
ATM all documentation uses the name Axiom.

-------------------------------------------------------

Quick installation:

Axiom now tries to support standard GNU build/installation 
conventions.  So if you have sources and all prerequisities
just:

configure && make && make install

should work. The above will install Axiom files in
/usr/local/axiom directory and put axiom command in
/usr/local/bin directory, you can give arguments to configure
to change those locations.

NOTE!! The above will install broken HyperDoc pages -- all graphic
examples will be missing (and trying to access them will crash hypertex).

The get working graphic examples long into X and replace 'make' above by
the following:

make
cd src/paste
make gphts
cd ../..
make

Important: building graphic examples accesses the X server, so it will
not work on text console.  During build drawings will temporarly
appear on the screen.  Redirecting X via ssh should work fine,
but may be slow. 

--------------------------------------------------------

Step by step instructions for first time users:

ATM this branch of Axiom is available only
via svn, so you need svn client (see http://subversion.tigris.org/).

0) Change to a directory with enough (1.2 GB) free space

1) Fetch sources:

svn co https://fricas.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fricas/trunk fricas

2) Fetch nonstandard prerequisities:

cd fricas
svn co https://axiom.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/axiom/branches/build-improvements/gcl gcl

mkdir zips

cd zips
wget https://axiom.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/axiom/trunk/axiom/zips/noweb-2.10a.tgz

2a) Go back to first directory
cd ../..

3) Create build directory and change to it:

mkdir ax-build
cd ax-build

4) Configure.  Assuming that you want axiom files to be installed in
/tmp/usr

../fricas/configure --prefix=/tmp/usr

5) Build and install:

make
make install

If you want graphic examples read the note before.

--------------------------------------------------------

Extra information about installation:

The preferred way to build this branch is to use already installed
gcl and noweb.  Also, it is preferable to use a separate build
directory.  Assuming that source tree is in fricas subdirectry
and you build in ax-build subdirectry, the following should just
work:

cd ax-build
../fricas/configure && make && make install

If you have istalled gcl in some non-standard place (or you
have multiple installations of gcl and you want to choose
correct one) you can use the following:

cd ax-build
../fricas/configure --with-lisp=/path/to/gcl && make && make install

Alternatively, you can just put gcl sources as a subdirectory
(called gcl) of fricas directory -- in this case the build
process should automatically build gcl and later use the freshly
build gcl.

Currently --with-lisp option accepts other lisp variants, namely
sbcl, clisp and openmcl.  Build machinery must know which Lisp
variant is in use. gcl, sbcl and clisp can be autodetected,
for openmcl one has to give an extra argument --with-lisp-flavor=openmcl
(you can also specify flavor for other Lisps, but this argument
is required only for openmcl).  If you use Lisp different than
gcl you should also specify --with-x=no option (otherwise
build will hang trying to generate HyperDoc pages)

Prerequisities:

- Lisp (currently only GCL is fully functional, sbcl, clisp
  and openmcl should work for core Axiom).
- noweb literate programing tool (http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~nr/noweb/)
- X libraries and headers (includig Xpm library)

---------------------------------------------------------------

Current goals:

-- generate all information that can be generated (documentation,
   images, databases)
-- remove unused code (both old and new but unfinished)
-- rework file handling (current code is buggy, complicated and
   inefficient)
-- improve SPAD compiler

   Waldek Hebisch