We have a few long standing REDUCE users, and a couple of days ago one of 
them pointed me at http://www.reduce-algebra.com which now says that 
REDUCE has been open-sourced...

Anyway I took the source from sourceforge and built a simple test sl5 
package out of it (using CSL as the 'standard lisp' it needs).  The 
packaging is far from ideal but it does seem to work at least for most of 
the test code that our users have tried so far.

--cut-here--
$ rpm -qi openreduce
Name        : openreduce                   Relocations: /usr/reduce-20081231-csl
Version     : 20081231                          Vendor: (none)
Release     : 2.csl.sl5x                    Build Date: Tue Jan 13 03:34:25 2009
Install Date: Tue Jan 13 04:12:39 2009      Build Host: pluto.damtp.cam.ac.uk
Group       : Mathematics                   Source RPM: openreduce-20081231-2.csl.sl5x.src.rpm
Size        : 17007370                         License: GPL/LGPL
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, Tue Jan 13 03:59:09 2009, Key ID 04a6250b6173bb82
URL         : http://www.reduce-algebra.com/
Summary     : REDUCE is an interactive program designed for general algebraic computations of interest to mathematicians, scientists and engineers.
Description :
REDUCE is an interactive program designed for general algebraic computations of
interest to mathematicians, scientists and engineers. Its capabilities include:

    1. expansion and ordering of polynomials and rational functions;
    2. substitutions and pattern matching in a wide variety of forms;
    3. automatic and user controlled simplification of expressions;
    4. calculations with symbolic matrices;
    5. arbitrary precision integer and real arithmetic;
    6. facilities for defining new functions and extending program syntax;
    7. analytic differentiation and integration;
    8. factorization of polynomials;
    9. facilities for the solution of a variety of algebraic equations;
   10. facilities for the output of expressions in a variety of formats;
   11. facilities for generating optimized numerical programs from symbolic input;
   12. calculations with a wide variety of special functions;
   13. Dirac matrix calculations of interest to high energy physicists.

It is often used as an algebraic calculator for problems that are possible to
do by hand. However, the main aim of REDUCE is to support calculations that are
not feasible by hand. Many such calculations take a significant time to set up
and can run for minutes, hours or even days on the most powerful computers.

See http://www.reduce-algebra.com/info-package.htm for more details.

This package is configured/built with the CSL (Codemist Standard Lisp).
--cut-here--

Because of the way it seems to work various things (e.g. fonts, docs) need 
to be in the same directory as the reduce executable, so my current hack 
to avoid cluttering up /usr/bin is to install all the bits for reduce 
under %{_prefix}/reduce-%{version}-csl/ and it then adds a wrapper shell 
script (in a %post) into %{_bindir}/ - this is pretty ugly but I can't see 
a better way without rather more serious work.

Note also that the selftests fail on x86_64 builds but that seems to be a 
known problem with the desir package (see the specfile for details).

RPMs and the SRPM can be found under:

   http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/linux/sl/damtp/5x/

ie.

   http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/linux/sl/damtp/5x/RPMS/i386/openreduce-20081231-2.csl.sl5x.i386.rpm
   http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/linux/sl/damtp/5x/RPMS/x86_64/openreduce-20081231-2.csl.sl5x.x86_64.rpm
   http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/linux/sl/damtp/5x/SRPMS/openreduce-20081231-2.csl.sl5x.src.rpm

and they shouldn't depend on any of our other local wierdness - I hope.

I'm sending this to the list just in case there are any other REDUCE users 
our there who might want to try this (and maybe save them doing the 
packaging themselves), or to find if anyone out there can offer advice on 
better ways to package it.

BTW we also have (not *too* ancient) Maxima sl5 packages (built with clisp 
from DAG) if anyone prefers that over REDUCE.

  -- Jon

-- 
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| Jon Peatfield, _Computer_ Officer, DAMTP,  University of Cambridge |
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