This section concerns the compilation, installation, or local use of several Mathemagix packages together, from sources.

1.Dependencies

For a minimal build of the Mathemagix interpreter, you will need to ensure that Libtool has been installed on your system with support for building dynamic libraries. In addition, you probably want to install Readline, which is convenient if you want to use the interpreter from a shell.

The other packages of Mathemagix each come with their specific dependencies; see the package list. The two most important dependencies are Gmp and Mpfr, which are required by almost all other packages. Developers also need to install Autotools, cmake, Doxygen, and TeXmacs.

2.Downloading from the svn server

The sources of Mathemagix can be downloaded from the svn server located at https://sourcesup.renater.fr/projects/mmx/ via the following command:

svn checkout https://subversion.renater.fr/anonscm/svn/mmx/

This will create a mmx directory containing all the source files.

Remark. If you have an account on SourceSup, then you may ask to join the Mathemagix project and contribute your own code. If you created such a developer account “my-name”, then you should use the following command instead for checking out:

svn checkout --username my-name https://subversion.renater.fr/authscm/my-name/svn/mmx/

3.Installation

Mathemagix packages comply with the standard GNU installation procedure. For a complete description please refer to the documentation of individual packages. In this section we describe how several packages can be configured, compiled and installed with the top level tools available in the mmx directory.

3.1.Configuration

In a text terminal or console, and within the mmx directory, you can type the following command:

./configure

The default list of the packages to be handled is thus printed. The latter list can be customized thanks to the –enable-package options. Dependencies are treated automatically. For instance

./configure --enable-algebramix --enable-mmxlight

will build the package algebramix and the interpreter mmxlight, as well as all dependencies (in this case basix and numerix). Notice that extra packages can be enabled a posteriori, simply by redoing a ./configure; this will not recompile the packages which are already available.

To build Mathemagix on certain architectures you may need to specify additional include and library paths. For example, if external dependencies have been installed via Macports on a MacOS platform then you have to type:

./configure CPPFLAGS=-I/opt/local/include LDFLAGS=-L/opt/local/lib

Default installation path is /usr/local/, but you can customize it with the –prefix option as follows:

./configure --prefix=…

In order to build the html documentation, you have to add the option –enable-doc to the configure script, but it requires that TeXmacs and Doxygen are installed on your platform. Finally the list of all configuration options is obtained using:

./configure --help

3.2.Compilation

Once the configuration stage is finished you can start the compilation by typing:

make

The following command performs the installation of Mathemagix:

make install

3.3.Development mode

If you do not want to install Mathemagix, then you can use it, either to try or to contribute, via the development mode. For this purpose you need to setup the paths needed for the applications to be built and used locally, by typing the following command in the mmx directory:

source set-devel-paths

This will allow you for instance to run the tests, the benchmarks, and the interpreter without installation, by typing for instance:

mmx-light

Since Mathemagix consists of several packages, this development mode is convenient for developers. Indeed, otherwise reinstalling a package after a modification may cause dependant packages to be recompiled over and over again. In case you have passed the –enable-doc option you can build the whole html documentation by typing make html.

If the one wants to run make in the specific package only then one can type:

make package-all

The other targets (which behave similarly) are:

check [package-check]

run the test suite of the package(s).

clean [package-clean]

clean the package(s).

confclean [package-confclean]

clean the configuration file of the package(s).

dist [package-dist]

build the distribution archive .tar.gz for each selected package.

distclean [package-distclean]

clean the built files and the Makefile(s).

html [package-html]

build the html documentation of the package(s).

install [package-install]

install the package(s) in the directory specified by the option –prefix=… of configure.

uninstall [package-uninstall]

unsintall the package(s).

4.Global Variables

The following variables should not be modified, unless you really know what you are doing.

• MMX_PREFIX_DIR: prefix used for the installation. If not set then basix-config –prefix is used by default.

• MMX_USER_DIR: path to user's ressources. If not set then $HOME/.mathemagix is used by default.

• MMX_SYSCONF_DIR: path to configuration directory. It is set to $MMX_PREFIX_DIR/etc by default.

• MMX_LOAD_PATH: path for loading Mathemagix files. If not set then .:'user_path'/mmx:'prefix_path'/mmx is used by default.

Beside global variables a global boot file is located at 'prefix_path'/etc/mathemagix/boot.mmx. It is automatically loaded by mmx-light. At the end, the latter boot file further loads a user boot file located at $MMX_USER_DIR/etc/boot.mmx. Use the shell option –noboot to disable these loadings.

5.Known problems

• Within the autotools, the development mode does not perfectly behave. In fact, if a version of Mathemagix is already installed on your system (in /usr/local/ as a default place) then you must prevent from of accidental linking conflicts by using the following 'trick':

  ./configure --prefix=/tmp/dummy

  assuming that /tmp/dummy is an empty directory. The latter option ensures that no local installation is to be found in the /tmp/dummy directory, hence preventing from linking of a library in development with another one already installed.

• Windows support via MinGW is still incomplete. You will need to configure using the option –enable-embedded. This will result in one huge executable to which all individual libraries have been linked statically. Not all packages have been tested yet too.

• Under some Linux distributions you may face a problem with SELinux whenever it is in standard strict mode. Indeed SELinux will prevent you from loading Mathemagix's dynamic librairies when in the development mode. As a solution you can go to your administration / security menu and Allow the use of shared libraries with Text Relocation. We strongly recommend you to refer to the SELinux documentation to really know what this change involves for the global security of your system.