2-node-supercomputer.net 2017-06-04

Installing Mathematica 11 on Archlinux

So I finally decided to buy Mathematica 11 at the student price through my university. When it comes to indefinite integrals, I've found Mathematica to be more reliable than my favorite opensource CAD, SymPy. (Yeah, there are others I haven't tried sufficiently, yet...)

So, anyway... I got it, so now I gotta install it on my archlinux laptop, right?

Thankfully, there is an AUR package for Mathematia. I use yaourt as a frontend to AUR. Since Mathematica is a large package, yaourt needs to be instructed to use a temporary directory that is on disk, not tmpfs mounted. I do this:

$ TMPDIR=/var/tmp yaourt -S mathematica

Then, edit the PKGBUILD file so as not to install all the documentation, since I use the web most of the time anyway. Sure, I may sometimes get in trouble without internet. Whatever.

While editing the PKGBUILD, it is also important to copy over the Mathematica install file. Since I use VIM, I do :shell, and create a symlink

$ ln -s /path/to/Mathematica_11.1.1_Install.sh

After exiting the install, just need to say yes a few times, and let the scripts do their work.