#2148 ?? and describe() aren't working

[jrredford]

describe() and ?? aren't working:

(%i1) describe(integrate);
WARNING: Empty documentation index. Describe command will not work!
No exact match found for topic `integrate'.
Try `?? integrate' (inexact match) instead.

(%o1) false
(%i2) ?? integrate;

(%o2) false

Below is the Maxima version that I'm using:

Maxima version: 5.23.2
Maxima build date: 17:9 1/17/2011
Host type: i686-pc-mingw32
Lisp implementation type: GNU Common Lisp (GCL)
Lisp implementation version: GCL 2.6.8

[Dieter Kaiser]

This bug is no longer present, because of the file-release:
2011-02-17 18:54:02 CET by andrejv
Closing this bug report as fixed.
Dieter Kaiser

[Volker van Nek]

I have to reopen this bug report. My observation:

volker@uvw32:~$ maxima
Maxima 5.24.0 http://maxima.sourceforge.net
using Lisp SBCL 1.0.45.0.debian
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) ?? integrate

Maxima encountered a Lisp error:

Couldn't load #P"/usr/share/info/./maxima-index.lisp": file does not exist.

Automatically continuing.
To enable the Lisp debugger set *debugger-hook* to nil.
;
; compilation unit aborted
; caught 1 fatal ERROR condition
(%i2) quit()$

maxima-index.lisp is located at a different place:

volker@uvw32:~$ find /usr/share/ -name maxima-index.lisp
/usr/share/doc/maxima-doc/info/maxima-index.lisp

Volker van Nek

[Volker van Nek]

I have to reopen this bug report. My observation:

volker@uvw32:~$ maxima
Maxima 5.24.0 http://maxima.sourceforge.net
using Lisp SBCL 1.0.45.0.debian
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) ?? integrate

Maxima encountered a Lisp error:

Couldn't load #P"/usr/share/info/./maxima-index.lisp": file does not exist.

Automatically continuing.
To enable the Lisp debugger set *debugger-hook* to nil.
;
; compilation unit aborted
; caught 1 fatal ERROR condition
(%i2) quit()$

maxima-index.lisp is located at a different place:

volker@uvw32:~$ find /usr/share/ -name maxima-index.lisp
/usr/share/doc/maxima-doc/info/maxima-index.lisp

Volker van Nek

[Volker van Nek]

It seems that this bug is only present in Ubuntu versions of Maxima.

If Maxima is compiled from sources, *.info-files and maxima-index.lisp will be found in /usr/local/share/info and describe works properly.

In Ubuntu *.info-files are in /usr/share/info/ while maxima-index.lisp is in /usr/share/doc/maxima-doc/info/.

So a workaround for Ubuntu is the command
sudo cp /usr/share/doc/maxima-doc/info/maxima-index.lisp /usr/share/info/

I will write an e-mail to Istvan Blahota who is the maintainer of Maxima in Ubuntu.

Volker van Nek

[Dieter Kaiser]

The last posting says that this is a problem in Ubuntu versions of Maxima only. A workaround has been given.
Closing this bug report as "Works for me".
Dieter Kaiser