Re: [Axiom-developer] RE: algebra Makefiles with explicit dependencies, bootstrap, fixed-points etc.

[root]

The lisp code in the BOOTSTRAP files (for the most part)
has been pretty-printed. Since the NRLIB .lsp files are
not normally read by humans they are not pretty-printed.

In some cases the BOOTSTRAP code has been hand-formatted.
The intention was that it would correctly tex and fit on
the page. 

Both of these reasons will keep you from diffing the file.
You'd need to use a lisp routine to (prettyprint (read them
before diffing.

I did receive your email that contained the differences
but since all of my email comes into an emacs RMAIL buffer
it generally looks like:

H4sICF5L3kEAA2ZpeGVkUG9pbnQubG9nAOw9a1fbyJKfN79CY/iAJ8ON3rLC7LlDwBDvEENsk9m7
X+4RtgCfGJsryyScox+/VdUtqVtqCRnIa+IcAnp0V1VXVddLrdb+5+niRjuafg4n2tliOo+1N6vp
bPLi119/7cVhFMTTxRyONePF7u6uBvdfBbOr8CIKXr3p9Y96J91/zJa3/zW6Xmn/E8w1zdVM8zX8
OI5m6rrz4uXLl8pO/cFJ782r8WISlvpbr3X/tWWy/n/8oe0a1m+e9pJ+//HHC+2FtnPYPTrvawkH
....

that is, base64. I have to decode it by hand to see what it is and I failed
to do that.


re: propagation

When you write out a domain in Axiom it contains a large vector which
describes all of the domain. Some of those vector elements are functions
and some are variables in the domain.

When you use a function from domain A in domain B the domain vector for
B will contain an index into the domain vector for A to get at the 
function. So if you inspect the domain vector for B you'll see hard-coded
integers which are indexes into the domain vector for A.

If A changes then the domain vector will be reshaped and the slot index
for functions will get renumbered. If B depends on A then it will get
recompiled and have a new slot number. 

So changes to A don't propagate quite the way I think you mean.
What you will find is that a bunch of magic integers have changed.

Tim