Octave-Symbolic 1.0.9 error

[mbrethen@…]

Octave 3.2.4 is installed on my machine, mac os x 10.6.8 (snow leopard) using the MacPorts distribution. I'm interested in doing some symbolic calculations. A portfile doesn't exist for the symbolic pkg, so I loaded the pkg in octave with the following warnings:

octave:1> pkg install ~/Downloads/symbolic-1.0.9.tar.gz
octave_help_OlwdEG:16: Misplaced {.
octave_help_OlwdEG:16: Misplaced }.
warning: gen_doc_cache: unusable help text in 'poly2sym'. Ignoring function.
octave_help_puO7Lr:17: Misplaced {.
octave_help_puO7Lr:17: Misplaced }.
warning: gen_doc_cache: unusable help text in 'sym2poly'. Ignoring function.

To start I attempted to declare some symbols, at which point octave gave the following error message:

octave:1> symbols
octave:2> x = sym("x")
octave(95278) malloc: *** error for object 0x7fff70f01500: pointer being freed was not allocated
*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
panic: Abort trap -- stopping myself...
attempting to save variables to `octave-core'...
save to `octave-core' complete
Abort trap

I don't know if this is related to the warning message above. It could also be that the libraries included with version 3.2.3 (I'm assuming that this applies to 3.2.4 as well) are 32bit. The attached readme describes a patch that needs to be applied (I couldn't tell from the octave portfile, if this patch is applied) the following patch

[mbrethen@…]

Readme file for octave 3.2.3

[mbrethen@…]

Cc Me!

[mbrethen@…]

I received some feedback from the oct-dev list:

"The errors you got during installation are not the cause of the second (which I don't know hot to fix). The first error is due to a syntax error on the documentation of those files which has already been fixed on the development version."

The patch is not the issue either, so I am at a loss as to why the symbolic pkg doesn't work with the MacPorts dist. A search on google found this on Octave-Forge:

"After a bit of debugging-by-mail we were able to determine that the error happens in line 90 of 'sym-create.cc'. That is at the end of a block when the 'GiNaC::symbol' destructor is being called. Somehow this causes a crash; I have been unable to determine why."

​http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Developing-Octave-Forge-packages-td3165052.html

[ryandesign@…]

Remember to use WikiFormatting please.

As reporter you do not need to Cc yourself.

[mbrethen@…]

Attaching the octave- core file...