On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 5:49 PM, Peter Lewis <pete@muddygoat.org> wrote:
On Wednesday 09 Jun 2010 at 23:31 Xyne wrote:
Incidentally, I remember that when I compiled it the package duplicated several other packages, e.g. maxima, because it includes other applications internally. Is there any way (yet) to make it use other packages instead? If not, does it fully provide any other packages?
Yes, this is exactly what I was trying to describe in my previous post - thanks for stating it clearer than me. And I think your suggestions are what is needed.
I took a longer look at their build/install system, and it doesn't look like it is very flexible in using external packages. It fully provides http://www.sagemath.org/packages/standard/ by default. These packages are optional http://www.sagemath.org/packages/optional/ which you would have to install after installing sage-mathematics afaik. Also, another optional package is in http://www.sagemath.org/sagedb/ which is basically a database that's worth a 2.6GB download :/ I have contacted upstream in case there is a relatively sane way of using external packages that come with the distro. I will post back if upstream says it's possible, but it looks like it won't be possible.
* The idea of an "arch-science" team comes to mind, similar to the "arch-haskell" team, which has done great work in making Arch useful for Haskell users, but I don't actually have any concrete ideas of what that would entail.
I'd be interested in helping out with this :-)
Pete.
I would also be interested. :) Thomas Dziedzic