[Maxima] maxima debug feature? - or how to accomplish same

[Max B]

Thanks to all who replied to my post about a maxima debugger.

I spent some of last week installing slime, and some of it investigating 
?trace... the maxima/lisp language is more complex than I thought.

One purpose I had in mind when I installed the source code was to obtain hints 
that are comments in the source, but direct one to bibliographic reference 
material.

Cheers!




________________________________
From: Leo Butler <l.butler at ed.ac.uk>
To: Max B <txtmax at yahoo.ca>
Cc: maxima at math.utexas.edu
Sent: Sun, October 10, 2010 7:01:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Maxima] maxima debug feature? - or how to accomplish same



On Sun, 10 Oct 2010, Max B wrote:

< 
< Hi,
< 
< Thanks for Maxima - it is a great tool!  :)
< 
< I am curious about how it operates; function call tree etc.  For example: 
identify the functions that are called when the user inputs '2+2;', or
< 'collectterms(expand(sbs));'.  Unfortunately, maxima is written in lisp and I 
can't seem to debug it.   Tools with which I am familiar include gdb, the printf
< function, and the cpp macros __LINE__ etc.
< 
< I do have the maxima-5.21.1 source code, and have managed to compile it. 
< 
< I have resolved to insert lines of code like 'at line __LINE__ in function 
__FUNC__' (or similar) into the functions in which I am interested, but cannot 
discover the
< syntax of lisp that would allow me to announce watchpoints like printf.
< 
< So in my desperation I thought to email this listserv to ask for help.

Maxima can be run using either the (default) Maxima reader or the Lisp
reader. The functions to_lisp() and (to-maxima) switch between readers.

The reason I say this is because you can run the Maxima package with
the Lisp reader on inside of, eg. SLIME. This is an Emacs mode that
gives you gdb-like features to step through code (more precisely, it
is similar to gdb-mode in Emacs).

Take some time and learn Lisp. At the very least you will discover
a language that throws many of your pre-conceptions about how things
ought to be done out the window.

Oh yeah, I think you will find this list is pretty friendly, so there
is no need to apologise for asking a question.

Leo
-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.math.utexas.edu/pipermail/maxima/attachments/20101018/ad6b88da/attachment-0001.html>