Re: [Axiom-developer] RE: building wh-sandbox on Axiom on Solaris 10.2 x86

[Martin Rubey]

> > Cherry picking from axiom.build-improvements is asking for
> > trouble. I would have thought that merge from build-improvements
> > should be done whole sale to keep in sync.
> 
> That concerns me a lot. I think that both Gaby and Waldek have done
> an enormous amount of really important work on the Axiom build system
> and this should continue. But for other axiom developers and axiom
> users to really benefit from *both* of these efforts, I think we need
> to merge the results at the current stage of development into a new
> Axiom Silver distribution that builds on as many systems as possible
> and which includes critical fixes to HyperDoc and some very important
> fixes to Axiom's algebra.
> 
> What can I do to encourage you (Waldek and Gaby) to devote some
> time to such a merge?

I really have to second that. It is not unlikely that I lost a very important
user (Neil Sloane) - because of difficulties to build.  This might as well ruin
the success of my guessing package in the scientific community, since: "if
Sloane wasn't able to build it, why should I try?"

Of course, I am in a bad position, since I did not contribute anything but
algebra code, so I can only beg.

PLEASE PLEASE merge!

Second most important thing: make HyperDoc run on Windows. I'm in the process
of advertising Axiom for the departments of Mathematics and physics at Vienna
University, since they are going to take a decision between Maple and
Mathematica.  One of the major issues is about integrated help
functionality. With Waldek's patches to HyperDoc, it is *really* usable, and it
seems that it will take a long time to have the same functionality on a
webbrowser, given that there is so much discussion to do.

I do the best I can to improve the algebra and to attract more scientists to
use and improve axiom, but I have to rely on you to make Axiom build and
organize all these improvements. I'm well aware of the fact that many of you
are also more interested in the algebra than in the build process... And I am
really grateful for all your work!

Martin