[Axiom-developer] RE: Axiom LatexWiki

[Bill Page]

Alfredo,

On August 18, 2006 3:38 PM you asked:

> Bill any idea what is this:
>
> vp1:=draw(sin(x), x=%pi/10..%pi)
>   >> System error: 
>  (SYSTEM "gcc -c -Wall -DVOL=volatile -fsigned-char -pipe
> -I/home/page/repository/axiom--main--1/mnt/linux/bin/../h -O3
> -fomit-frame-pointer -c \"/tmp/gazonk1.c\" -o \"/tmp/gazonk1.o\" -w")

> returned a non-zero value 0. 
>
> I get this error if I try to do:
>
> \begin{axiom}
> vp1:=draw(sin(x), x=%pi/10..%pi)
> \end{axiom}
>
> That is using the binaries files of Axiom from MathAction:
>
> )version 
> Value = "Wednesday June 21, 2006 at 03:45:56 "

I don't get that error on Axiom Developer. See:

http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/SandBoxAxiom#bottom

The "gazonk" files are temporary files created by the gcl lisp
compiler. I presume that the lisp compiler is being called to
compile the function 'sin(x)' prior to using it to generate the
data for the graph (which makes more sense of course if the
function to be plotted is more complex than in this example).

Anyway, the Axiom interpreter (all of Axiom for that matter) is
implemented in gcl and because this is lisp that means that it
*is* gcl plus the code that implements the interpreter. So Axiom/gcl
converts 'sin(x)' into a lisp function and then tries to compile
it into machine code. To do that it first generates C code
(gazonk1.c) and then calls gcc. The system error that you see
above is due to a failure of the C compile. I do not know the
cause but I think you might get this kind of error if no gcc
compiler is available. Or some other basic problem in your system.
But I would not expect any gcc compiler failure for lisp generated
from expressions as simple as 'sin(x)'.

This whole gazonk temporary file thing is not particularly well
done in the current version of gcl (especially in the case of
multi-user systems) because of possible race conditions while
generating unique temporary file names and there have been some
discussions on the gcl-devel list about replacing it with a linux
operating system standard method for tmp files.

Regards,
Bill Page.