Maxima and wxMaxima on Mac OS X

This page describes how I compile maxima (and gnuplot) so that I can use it with wxMaxima on Mac OS X.

Compiling maxima

wxMaxima can be used with maxima compiled with cmucl. To compile maxima using cmucl, do the following:

• download cmucl from [1] (download cmucl-2007-11-ppc-darwin.tar.bz2 for PPC and cmucl-2007-11-x86-darwin.tar.bz2 for Intel based Macs)
• in Terminal (/Applications/Utils/Terminal) enter the following commands

cd /usr/local
sudo tar xjf full-path-to-downloaded-binary

• download maxima from [2]
• in Terminal compile and install maxima

cd path-to-downloaded-file
tar xzf maxima-5.15.tar.gz
cd maxima-5.15
./configure --with-cmucl=/usr/local/bin/lisp
make
sudo make install

• to run maxima from the terminal enter

maxima

• to run xmaxima from the terminal enter

xmaxima

Compiling gnuplot

For inline plotting wxMaxima requires gnuplot with support for the png terminal. First install AquaTerm. Now compile gnuplot 4.2 from source. Before gnuplot, the following libraries need to be compiled (in the order given below):

• expat
• zlib
• libpng
• fontconfig
• freetype
• libgd

Each of these needs to be compiled from source. Download and unarchive the sources. In Terminal go to the source directory and enter

configure
make
sudo make install

Now download the source for gnuplot 4.2 and compile and install it using above commands.

Configuration

I have the following in the file $HOME/.maxima/maxima-init.mac

gnuplot_command:"/usr/local/bin/gnuplot"$
draw_command:"/usr/local/bin/gnuplot"$
set_plot_option([gnuplot_term, aqua])$
set_plot_option([gnuplot_pipes_term, aqua])$

for plot2d, plot3d, draw2d and draw3d to work with AquaTerm.