Debian

The files in this directory are the architecture dependent Debian distribution files. We hope the automatic procedure described below works for you, so you don't have to download any of these files manually. With luck, you will not have to visit this page again nor read these instructions again. Please let us know if that doesn't work out for you.

Instructions for installing Macaulay 2 with root access

Prepare for installing Macaulay 2 (with apt-get, gdebi-gtk, or the Synaptic Package Manager) by adding the following line to the file /etc/apt/sources.list:

    deb http://www.math.uiuc.edu/Macaulay2/Repositories/Debian stable main

(Warning: For Debian, there are three possibilities for the keyword where "stable" appears in the line above: "stable", "lenny", and "etch". The keyword "etch" refers to Debian version 4, and the keyword "lenny" refers to Debian version 5. Before July 12, "stable" was a synonym for "etch" in the Macaulay2 repository, but after that, it was made into a synonym for "lenny". See dists. Let us know if that causes a problem.)

There are various ways to add that line to that file:

• Use the "Synaptic Package Manager", which can be started from the "System/Administration" menu or the "Desktop/Administration" menu. (You may also start it with the command "sudo synaptic" in a shell window.) Pull down the "Settings" menu, and select "Repositories". Now, depending on which version you have, do one of the following.
  • If you see a tab labelled "Third Party Software", click on it, then click on "Add", and add the entry. If you make a mistake, be prepared to use an editor to edit the file to correct it.
  • If you see a tab labelled "Installation Media", then click on it, then click on "Add" and then "Custom", and add the entry.
• Use the "Software Sources" program, which can be started from the "System/Administration" menu, or the "Software Properties" program, which can be started from the "Desktop/Administration" menu.
• Use the command "sudo emacs /etc/apt/sources.list" to edit the file and add that line.

Having added the line, now reload the package lists from the repositories (i.e., click on the "Reload" button) and then click on the Mathematics (Math) section. You should see "macaulay2" on the list, available for download: click on it. It will add both "macaulay2" and "macaulay2-common" to the list of packages to be installed. (Behind the scenes, the package manager will consult our Debian repository.)

Warning: if you don't see "macaulay2" on the list, do not click on "macaulay2-common" to install it. Instead, wait for us to get around to producing the "macaulay2" package. (The "macaulay2-common" package contains the files that do not depend on the architecture of your machine, and thus may be produced earlier.)

Later upgrades to Macaulay 2 will become available to you almost automatically. You can periodically run the Synaptic Package Manager and check for updates by clicking on "Reload" and then on "Mark all Upgrades". Alternatively, when an orange starburst icon is occasionally displayed in your task bar indicating that updates are available from Debian headquarters, you may click on the icon to activate the Update Manager, and then click on "Check" to download any new package information from the software channels, including the Macaulay 2 repository. If an update of Macaulay 2 is available, it will be displayed at the bottom of the list, after the Important Security Updates and the Recommended Updates, among the Other Updates. Press "Install Updates" to have it installed, along with the others. (Our update will be listed as "Not authenticated", and the "list of changes" will not be available. We'll work on that.)

Another way to install Macaulay 2, after that line are added to /etc/apt/sources.list, is with this command line.

	sudo apt-get install macaulay2

Warning: if you get something like the following warning:

  macaulay2: Depends: macaulay2-common (= 1.2) but 1.3 is to be installed

then that means that the debian install program (apt-get) is confused by the presence of a macaulay2-common package that is more modern than the macaulay2 package you have asked it to install. In that case, you may install macaulay2-common first, with something like the command:

    sudo apt-get install macaulay2-common=1.2

Warning: if you get something like the following error messages:

        $ M2
        M2: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.11' not found (required by M2)
        M2: /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2: no version information available (required by M2)
        M2: /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2: no version information available (required by M2)
        M2: /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2: no version information available (required by M2)
        $ 

then it means that we have compiled M2 on a more recent version of Debian than you have installed on your machine. To fix it, you can "upgrade" to the latext ubuntu release (for example, Macaulay2 1.3.1 requires ubuntu 9.10 or higher), or you can compile Macaulay2 from source code.

The preferred way to run Macaulay 2 is with emacs, but the installation procedure described above doesn't teach emacs how to do that. So, after Macaulay 2 is successfully installed as described above, the first thing you should do is to run M2 and to issue the Macaulay 2 command setupEmacs(). That will ensure that the next time you start emacs, it knows how to edit *.m2 files, and it knows that when you press the f12 key, it should start Macaulay 2 running in an interactive buffer.

If the procedure above doesn't work for you, then you may install the package files files manually with dpkg (they all have names of the form *.deb), but starting with version 1.0, they come in pairs, one containing the architecture dependent files (in this directory), and one of the the common files containing the architecture independent files and having "common" in the name.

Instructions for installing Macaulay 2 without root access

You may install from a tar file, if we have provided one above. Alternatively, here is the procedure for unpacking a *.deb file yourself. We assume the *.deb file is called /tmp/Macaulay2-1.2-amd64-Linux-Debian-123.456.1.deb, which you have chosen because you have version 123.456 of Debian.

     mkdir foo
     cd foo
     ar x /tmp/Macaulay2-1.2-amd64-Linux-Debian-123.456.1.deb data.tar.gz
     tar xzf data.tar.gz

The result will be a directory tree named "usr", which can be moved and renamed at will. After moving it, run the program bin/M2 contained within, and run the "setup()" command to set up your standard init files, as described elsewhere. Then the directory "foo" and the file "data.tar.gz" in it can be removed.