Comments on: SICM on Mac OS X

By: CrimsonMinstral

CrimsonMinstral — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:52:05 +0000

Actually it does work on a PPC Mac (G4 17″ 1.67GHz with 2GB RAM). Using your instructions (thanks by the way), I got mit-scheme and scmutils built and running. There is a new mit-scheme by the way but it no longer comes with a PPC binary. You either need to use the 20070909 package *or* use the new package a build mit-scheme using the portable C package. It works but it takes a *long* time to build.

Here, however is my problem. I keep getting a

;Unassigned variable: *compiler-input-pathname*

error when I bind the following definitions from Chapter 1 of the book:

(define
((L-free-particle mass) local)
(let ((v (velocity local)))
(* 1/2 mass (dot-product v v))))

(define q
(up (literal-function ‘x)
(literal-function ‘y)
(literal-function ‘z)))

(define (Lagrangian-action L q t1 t2)
(definite-integral (compose L (Gamma q)) t1 t2))

(define (test-path t)
(up (+ (* 4 t) 7)
(+ (* 3 t) 5)
(+ (* 2 t) 1)))

(Lagrangian-action (L-free-particle 3.0) test-path 0.0 10.0)

Any thoughts? The problem exists using a straight terminal or GNU-Emacs. Seems to me this variable should have been bound in either the mit-scheme build or the scmutils build. I’ve used both the 20070909 PPC binary and built the 20080130 source for mit-scheme. Same problem exists in both cases so it seems this might be internal to scmutils. What did I miss?

p.s. I wish scmutils didn’t have so much eccentric code in it. mzscheme/DrScheme would be a better environment and make the package more accessible for teaching. The port seems to be a real bear unfortunately.

By: Jonathan Yedidia

Jonathan Yedidia — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:57:11 +0000

gmlk,
I’m sorry it didn’t work for you. I’m guessing that my instructions will only work for an Intel Mac. Especially since scmutils-200609-06-ix86-gnu-linux-sarge.tar.gz has “ix86″ in it.

By: gmlk

gmlk — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:04:53 +0000

Following your instructions on a powerbook G4 15″ with 2GB of RAM I get an “out of memory” error:

; Compiling file: “rules.bin” => “rules.c”…
;Aborting!: out of memory
;GC #1277: took: 0.10 (36%) CPU time, 0.16 (46%) real time; free: 973569
;GC #1278: took: 0.90 (100%) CPU time, 0.14 (98%) real time; free: 973727
;GC #1279: took: 0.90 (100%) CPU time, 0.14 (99%) real time; free: 973727

Any suggestions would be helpful?

By: agian

agian — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 21:18:19 +0000

Hi - I’m just getting into this myself, though not on a Mac.
Do you know of any online groups supporting either learning of SICM or scmutils? Feel free to e-mail me.

I’d particularly like to see scmutils made widely available as a vehicle for teaching physics, and not necessearily just in the Scheme language either.

Good Luck!

By: Jonathan Yedidia

Jonathan Yedidia — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:14:39 +0000

Thanks. Yes it’s geeky, but this is “Nerd Wisdom” after all…

By: Barak

Barak — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:02:05 +0000

Man that’s geeky. And yet I understood every word.