Subject: Re: [bug#27628] [PATCH 3/3] gnu: maxima: Ensure gcc and binutils available at runtime.

From: [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès)
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2017 10:19:34 +0200

Hi Kei,

Kei Kebreau <[email-masked]> skribis:

> [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>
>> Kei Kebreau <[email-masked]> skribis:
>>
>>> +               ;; Ensure that Maxima will have access to GCC and its required
>>> +               ;; components at runtime.
>>
>> In fact, if it’s an optional feature, it would be better to take GCC &
>> co. from $PATH, because GCC is a huge dependency.  (Same for the gcl
>> change.)
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>
> I started on this patchset because Guix's Maxima cannot graph functions.
> This feature relies on GCL's 'compile' function. The 'compile' function
> seems to be a Common Lisp standard since at least the publication of the
> CLtL2 standard. Maxima assumes (correctly) that this function is present
> and relies on it for various base functionalities (compiling Maxima math
> functions to compiled Lisp functions, graphing, etc.).

Good point, ‘compile’ is standard CL.

So yes, that alone is probably a good reason to keep references to GCC
and Binutils (maybe add a comment explaining this.)  Sorry for holding
it back!

> I turns out that fixing the underlying issue with GCL removes the need
> for GCC's presence at runtime, but binutils is still necessary due to
> Maxima using the 'compile' function from GCL directly. This stems from
> the GCC package not finding the binutils at runtime, i.e.
>
>     guix environment --pure --ad-hoc gcc -- gcc hello-world.c
>
> returns
>
>     gcc: error trying to exec 'as': execvp: No such file or directory
>
> but
>
>     guix environment --pure --ad-hoc gcc -- gcc -S hello-world.c

You would need ‘gcc-toolchain’ rather than ‘gcc’ here.

Thank you,
Ludo’.