The MeatAxe is written in C, and it is assumed that the package is installed under UNIX. Some other systems --currently MS-DOS and VM/CMS-- are supported, but this applies only for the standalone and not for the use of the MeatAxe from within GAP (see the MeatAxe manual~Rin93 for details of the installation in these cases).
If you got a complete binary and source distribution, skip the extraction and compilation part of this section. All what you have to do in this case is to make the executables accessible via a pathname that contains the hostname of the machine; this is best done by creating suitable links, as is described at the end of this section.
If you got a complete source distribution, skip the extraction part of this section and proceed with the compilation part below.
In the example we will assume that you, as user gap, are installing the
MeatAxe package for use by several users on a network of two DECstations,
called bert and tiffy, and a NeXTstation, called bjerun. We assume
that GAP is also installed on these machines following the
instructions given in Installation of GAP for UNIX.
Note that certain parts of the output in the examples should only be taken as rough outline, especially file sizes and file dates are not to be taken literally.
First of all you have to get the file meataxe.zoo (see Getting GAP).
Then you must locate the GAP directory containing lib/ and doc/,
this is usually gap3r4p0 where 0 is to be be replaced by the patch
level.
gap@tiffy:~ > ls -l
drwxr-xr-x 11 gap gap 1024 Nov 8 1991 gap3r4p0
-rw-r--r-- 1 gap gap 359381 May 11 11:34 meataxe.zoo
gap@tiffy:~ > ls -l gap3r4p0
drwxr-xr-x 2 gap 3072 Nov 26 11:53 doc
drwxr-xr-x 2 gap 1024 Nov 8 1991 grp
drwxr-xr-x 2 gap 2048 Nov 26 09:42 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 gap 2048 Nov 26 09:42 src
drwxr-xr-x 2 gap 1024 Nov 26 09:42 tst
Unpack the package using unzoo (see Installation of GAP for UNIX).
Note that you must be in the directory containing gap3r4p0 to unpack
the files. After you have unpacked the source you may remove the
archive-file.
gap@tiffy:~ > unzoo x meataxe.zoo
gap@tiffy:~ > ls -l gap3r4p0/pkg/meataxe
-rw-r--r-- 1 gap 17982 Aug 6 1993 COPYING
-rw-r--r-- 1 gap 3086 Mar 15 15:07 README
drwxr-xr-x 3 gap 512 Mar 26 18:01 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 gap 512 Feb 25 12:07 doc
drwxr-xr-x 2 gap 512 May 11 09:34 gap
-rw-r--r-- 1 gap 1023 May 11 09:34 init.g
drwxr-xr-x 2 gap 1024 Mar 26 18:02 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 gap 1536 Mar 26 18:02 src
drwxr-xr-x 2 gap 512 Mar 15 11:36 tests
Switch into the directory bin/, edit the Makefile, and follow the
instructions given there. In most cases it will suffice to choose the
right COMPFLAGS. Then type make to compile the MeatAxe.
In your case we first compile the DECstation version.
gap@tiffy:~ > cd gap3r4p0/pkg/meataxe/bin
gap@tiffy:../bin > make
# you will see a lot of messages
The executables reside in a directory with the same name as the host, in
this case this is tiffy. The programs will be called from GAP using
the hostname, thus for every machine that shall run the MeatAxe under
GAP such a directory is necessary. In your case there is a second
DEC-station called bert which can use the same executables, we make them
available via a link.
gap@tiffy:../bin > ln -s tiffy bert
Now repeat the compilation for the NeXTstation. If you want to save space
you can clean up using make clean but this is not necessary.
If the make run was interrupted you can return to the prior situation
using make delete, and then call make again.
gap@tiffy:../bin > rlogin bjerun
gap@bjerun:~ > cd gap3r4p0/pkg/meataxe/bin
gap@bjerun:../bin > make clean
gap@bjerun:../bin > make
# you will see a lot of messages
gap@bjerun:../bin > exit
gap@tiffy:../bin >
Now it is time to test the package. Switch into the directory ../tests/
and type ./testmtx. You should get no error messages, and end up with
the message all tests passed.
gap@tiffy:../bin > cd ../tests
gap@tiffy:../tests > ./testmtx
# you will see a lot of messages
gap@tiffy:../tests >
GAP 3.4.4