[Axiom-developer] openmcl port

[Waldek Hebisch]

I have now succesfully built Axiom with openmcl (using 
"OpenMCL Version 1.1-pre-070512 (LinuxX8664)").  However it looks
that openmcl (at least on Linux) is buggy: when I created an
executable with new toplevel it crashed on startup.  Second bug
is that symbol | | (name consisting of single space) may be
printed as backlash at the end of line, effectivly changing
name from space to newline (normally openmcl prints | | as
'\ ', that is backlash followed by space, but at the end of
line the space may vanish...).

There is also third bug (probably related to the first one):
given '--version' option openmcl crashes.  In itself this
bug does only little harm, but because '--help' option does
not print any string giving out identity of openmcl this
makes autodetection complicated.

Concerning creating executables: I implemented a workaround
that creates a shell script which in turn starts openmcl
with '--eval' argument to get new to new toplevel.

I do not plan to spent more time on openmcl, but since openmcl
is reported to work well on MacOSX Mac folks may wish to try
it.  I can provide a patch (which probably will need a little
adjustment due to different file name).

-- 
                              Waldek Hebisch
address@hidden