The following external tools are needed to build and/or use Maxima:

1) A supported Lisp implementation. See README.lisps.

2) To build Maxima in the standard manner, Bourne shell and make are
   required. See INSTALL.

3) Maxima can also be built using nothing except Lisp. See
   INSTALL.lisp.

4) Plotting uses gnuplot, <http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net>, by
   default. Plotting can also be done with Maxima's xmaxima
   application.

5) xmaxima requires Tcl/Tk, preferably version 8.5 or later.
   xmaxima is both one possible interface to  Maxima and a plotting
   program. As a graphical interface it is not required but as a
   plotting program it is required by some commands (plotdf, ploteq
   and scene).

6) drawdf requires Vtk and its bindings for Tcl/Tk.
 
7) The scene command requires python-vtk
 
8) Building Maxima from GIT additionally requires the GNU autotools.