Draw cannot be loaded in 16.04 (Repackage needed since gcl has changed?)

[PeterPall]

== SRU Impact ==

A large portion of functionality is unavailable

== Test Case ==

In the maxima CLI, run
load ("draw");

Either this succeeds or fails (this bug)

== Regression Potential ==

This worked out in Debian and Ubuntu zesty, so minimal.

== Original bug report ==

In 16.04

     load ("draw");

according for example to https://sourceforge.net/p/maxima/mailman/message/35219237/ seems to fail for some users. If maxima is compiled from source there is no problem => It seems like gcl has changed after maxima was packaged which broke compilation => A no-changes-rebuild of the package might fix the problem.

[PeterPall (peterpall)]

Seems like things are more complicated: Robert Dodier says the following:

> *LOAD-PATHNAME* is supposed to be a predefined global variable. It is
> supposed to be referenced in a certain way, but older versions of GCL
> require that it be referenced in a different way.
>
> The current version of Maxima (post commit 623a513, which fell after
> 5.37.2) has code to handle both ways to reference *LOAD-PATHNAME*. So
> from what I know, it's not susceptible to the error you've encountered.

[PeterPall (peterpall)]

Changed the status of this ticket to "confirmed" since more than one user of the maxima-discuss mailing list has reported the problem there.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

It is fixed in Debian in version 5.37.2-9.

[Marius (felijohn)]

When are we going to get the update from Debian? It was fixed there almost four months ago.

[Gilles Schintgen (shigi)]

Is there any progress on this issue? Or maybe there's a workaround?

[James Bowery (jabowery)]

Obviously the maintainer is absent. What is the procedure to get this released as part of the xenial updates?

[PeterPall (peterpall)]

For the upcoming "zesty" release it the canonical way would be:
 - become the maintainer for maxima on *debian*
 - then request the package to be synchronized with ubuntu.

For the current release I guess we first need someone to contact (or to become) the maintainer. How the process continues from then I unfortunately do not know.

---

A thing the maintainer perhaps could do would be to create a launchpad mirror of the sourceforge repo maxima's code is kept in - and then to initiate a nightly build ppa for maxima.

[James Bowery (jabowery)]

When I click on the "Unassigned" edit icon, I get a popup that says I can assign myself responsibility. Since I can be just as irresponsible as no one I guess I could assign myself but then what? Where is the documentation on how to become a maintainer?

[Stefano Rivera (stefanor)]

Uploaded to xenial and yakkety proposed, pending SRU team approval.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Hello PeterPall, or anyone else affected,

Accepted maxima into xenial-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/maxima/5.37.2-8ubuntu0.16.04.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed.Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The yakkety upload has change the xenial one did not, could you explain it?

diff -Nru maxima-5.37.2/debian/files maxima-5.37.2/debian/files
--- maxima-5.37.2/debian/files 1969-12-31 16:00:00.000000000 -0800
+++ maxima-5.37.2/debian/files 2016-12-22 08:12:53.000000000 -0800
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+maxima_5.37.2-8ubuntu0.16.04.1_source.buildinfo math optional

[Stefano Rivera (stefanor)]

Thanks Brian, that sounds like an accident. (-nc is only a good idea if you haven't picked up junk).

Uploaded it again.

[Andy Whitcroft (apw)]

The patch template has not been filled in correctly (for next time).

+Description: <short summary of the patch>
+ TODO: Put a short summary on the line above and replace this paragraph
+ with a longer explanation of this change. Complete the meta-information
+ with other relevant fields (see below for details). To make it easier, the
+ information below has been extracted from the changelog. Adjust it or drop
+ it.

as this has already been accepted in xenial it really ought to be in yakkety already?

[Andy Whitcroft (apw)]

Hello PeterPall, or anyone else affected,

Accepted maxima into yakkety-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/maxima/5.37.2-8ubuntu0.16.10.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

[Stefano Rivera (stefanor)]

> The patch template has not been filled in correctly (for next time).

Yeah, that's the patch from 5.37.2-9, as is.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

This update fails to build on arm64 on Ubuntu 16.10 and on arm64 and ppc64el on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, but the existing Ubuntu packages are built for those architectures. :(

[James Bowery (jabowery)]

Failed.

$ apt-get install maxima/yakkety-proposed
...
$ maxima

Maxima 5.37.2 http://maxima.sourceforge.net
using Lisp GNU Common Lisp (GCL) GCL 2.6.12
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.
(%i1) load("draw");

loadfile: failed to load /usr/share/maxima/5.37.2/share/draw/draw.lisp

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

@James, sorry, but did you use sudo to install it? Because you wrote otherwise.

[James Bowery (jabowery)]

@Amr, Yes. I had executed `sudo -s` previously.

I wrote incorrectly. I should have placed a '#' rather than a "$" at the start of the `apt-get` line. However, the `$ maxima` was correctly written.

[Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100)]

As part of a recent change in the Stable Release Update verification policy we would like to inform that for a bug to be considered verified for a given release a verification-done-$RELEASE tag needs to be added to the bug where $RELEASE is the name of the series the package that was tested (e.g. verification-done-xenial). Please note that the global 'verification-done' tag can no longer be used for this purpose.

Thank you!

[ernesto (ernesto-bosch)]

Hi,

I just update from Mint 17 Cinnamon to 18 Cinnamon and found the same problem. Lurking a little in the Internet I discover no one has a clear solution so I tried myself.

After a little playing I came up with two solutions:
a.1) remove Maxima 5.37.2 completely from your system,
a.2) go to SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/maxima/files/Maxima-Linux/5.41.0-Linux/),
     get Maxima Linux directory and install (5.41.0 version):

     i) maxima-common_5.41.0-6_all.deb (remember maxima-common first)
     ii) maxima-clisp_5.41.0-6_amd64.deb
     iii) maxima-ecl_5.41.0-6_amd64.deb
     iv) maxima-gcl_5.41.0-6_amd64.deb
     v) maxima-sbcl_5.41.0-6_amd64.deb

a.3) go to your preferred software installer (Synaptic for me) and install wxMaxima.

You will end with a working Maxima up to date environment.

For those more technical biased the problem is in the /usr/share/maxima/5.37.2/draw/draw.lisp
file. To solver it you should (remember you will need "root privileges":

b.1) replace the line

   (load (merge-pathnames (make-pathname :name "draw" :type "system")
         #-gcl *load-pathname*
         #+gcl sys:*load-pathname*))

b.2) with the line

   (load (merge-pathnames (make-pathname :name "draw" :type "system")
         (maxima-load-pathname-directory)))

and the problem is solve (at least for me). You should end with a Maxima 5.37.2
working environment.

Good Luck,

Ernesto

PS: Internet community help me a lot along the years, happy to return.

[Rafael Alberto Pastoriza (rapast)]

January 2020

Hi,

I have the same error bug 1602941 Draw cannot be loaded in Ubuntu Xenial 16.04.
Maxima and vxMaxima gives the error when I tried to load(draw) after update the SO to 16.04.

The intensive internet search find the solution, in my case, here in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/maxima/+bug/1602941

The contribution made by ernesto(ernesto-bosch) in 2018-08-12 gives the solution. I follow the second method b.1) and b.2)), it's fast, clean and works for me.

Thanks Ernesto!!! ¡¡¡Un millón de gracias Ernesto!!!

Sorry but I find an omission, a missing subdirectoy /share, following /5.37.2 in his path.

In my case the complete path is:

/usr/share/maxima/5.37.2/share/draw/draw.lisp

But the idea is clear, edit the file draw.lisp to change the directives to load gcl by using the maxima-load-pathname-directory

This is what I do following Ernesto recomendations.

Close any maxima/vxmaxima active sesion.

So first using gedit as root to copy the original file draw.lisp and make a backup as draw old.lisp(just in case you needs reverse the procedure).

Then edit draw.lisp to change, delete the lines #-gcl *load-pathname*
                                                #+gcl sys:*load-pathname*
and replace with (maxima-load-pathname-directory). Be careful and check the matching ()!!! before quit and save.

Then I invoke vxmaxima/maxima and load(descriptive), because this package needs a lot of graphics and load(draw).

It compile the files :
Compiling /usr/share/maxima/5.37.2/share/draw/grcommon.lisp.
Compiling /usr/share/maxima/5.37.2/share/draw/gnuplot.lisp.
Compiling /usr/share/maxima/5.37.2/share/draw/vtk.lisp.
Compiling /usr/share/maxima/5.37.2/share/draw/picture.lisp.

and then draw works in vxmaxima.

Just in case you don't remember how to use gedit as root

rafa@miniPc:~$ sudo gedit
[sudo] password for rafa:

Good Luck

Rafael