73 Installing GAP

Sections

1. Installation for the Impatient
2. Getting GAP
3. GAP for UNIX
4. Installation of GAP for UNIX
5. Known Problems of the Configure Process
6. Problems on Particular Systems
7. Optimization and Compiler Options
8. GAP for Windows
9. Copyright of GAP for Windows
10. Installation of GAP for Windows
11. Expert Windows installation
12. GAP for MacOS
13. Copyright of GAP for MacOS
14. Installation of GAP for MacOS
15. Testing for the System Architecture
16. Porting GAP
17. The Documentation
18. HTML Font Setup
19. If Things Go Wrong

GAP runs on a large number of different operating systems. It behaves slightly different on each of those. This chapter describes the behaviour of GAP, the installation, and the options on some of those operating systems.

Currently it contains sections for UNIX (see GAP for UNIX), which runs on an ever increasing number of machines, for Windows (see GAP for Windows), which is one operating system for IBM PC compatibles and MacOS (see GAP for MacOS), which is the operating system on Apple Macintosh computers.

For other systems the section Porting GAP gives hints how to approach such a port.

Section The Documentation contains information about the manual, where to find and how to print it.

73.1 Installation for the Impatient

Because GAP supports three different platforms, Windows, Macintosh and UNIX, the installation process might differ a bit from what you are used to. This document explains in detail which files to get and how to install the system and if you are inexperienced we strongly recommend you follow these instructions.

If you already have experience in installing GAP or would not read the installation instructions anyhow this section provides a quick run through of the installation on a UNIX system. (If it is incomprehensible or causes problems, please follow the explicit installation instructions given below!)

Get and unzoo binary and installation archive(s) and the most recent bugfix file (including the most recent binary if you use Windows or Mac). The following instructions assume you have unzoo and it is in your path. Call

unzoo -x gap4r3.zoo
cd gap4r3

unzoo -x ../fix4r3nX.zoo

./configure
make

Send an email to gap@dcs.st-and.ac.uk, telling us about the installation. (This is just a courtesy; we like to know how many people are using GAP and get feedback regarding difficulties (hopefully none) that users may have had with installation.)

You might also want to unpack and install GAP packages. Generally, this involves first getting accpkg4r3.zoo and deppkg4r3.zoo (these have all the accepted/refereed and all the deposited but not yet refereed GAP packages, respectively) or visiting the GAP website again and first looking for the GAP Packages link and following through to the individual GAP package .zoo files you want. The package .zoo files should all be unzoo-ed in the pkg directory, i.e. do: cd pkg first. Some of the GAP packages are written entirely in GAP; these are essentially ``ready-to-go'' after unpacking, except they should be listed in the ALLPKG file (see Loading a GAP Package). Other GAP packages have a C code component; these generally require one to do: ./configure; make in their respective directories.

Each GAP package has a README; it's recommended that despite your impatience that you at least give these a quick glance; for one thing they will tell you whether the ./configure; make steps are needed.

Also note that a few details might have changed since the last release.

73.2 Getting GAP

GAP is distributed free of charge. You can obtain it via ftp and give it away to your colleagues. GAP is not in the public domain, however. In particular you are not allowed to incorporate GAP or parts thereof into a commercial product.

If you get GAP, we would appreciate it if you could notify us, e.g., by sending a short e-mail message to gap@dcs.st-and.ac.uk, containing your full name and address, so that we have a rough idea of the number of users. We also hope that this number will be large enough to convince various agencies that GAP is a project worthy of (financial) support. If you publish some result that was partly obtained using GAP, we would appreciate it if you would cite GAP, just as you would cite another paper that you used. (The copyright page of the manual gives a sample citation.) Again we would appreciate if you could inform us about such a paper.

The current release of GAP is version 4.3.

We distribute the full source for everything, the C code for the kernel, the GAP code for the library, and the TeX code for the manual. So it should be no problem to get GAP, even if you have a rather uncommon system. Of course, ports to non UNIX systems may require some work. Note that about 16 MByte of main memory (though at least 32 MByte is desirable) and about 30MB of disk space are required to run GAP. A full GAP installation, including all GAP packages and data libraries can use 200MB and more of disk space. GAP will compile on pentium (586) processors, though a faster machine is recommended.

We list and describe the extraction from .zoo archives below. As of GAP 4.3, however, we also supply the equivalent .zip and .tar.gz archives (simply download the archive type you prefer and use the corresponding extraction command).

(If you already downloaded an installation archive, you may ignore the rest of this section.)

The easiest way to get GAP for most users is probably via the World Wide Web. The main GAP Web site is found at http://www.gap-system.org

There are two mirror sites updated automatically each night, at:

http://www.math.rwth-aachen.de/~GAP

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/mirrors/GAP and

At these sites you can browse this manual, download the system and contributed extensions, read past postings to the GAP forum, and find out about authors of and contributors to GAP, publications that cited GAP and GAP related events.

GAP can also be obtained by anonymous ftp from (at least) the following servers.

ftp-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk:

School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK. Directory /pub/gap/gap4/.

ftp.math.rwth-aachen.de:

Lehrstuhl D für Mathematik, RWTH Aachen, Germany. Directory /pub/gap4/.

ftp.ccs.neu.edu:

College of Computer Science, Northeastern University, Boston, USA. Directory /pub/mirrors/ftp-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/pub/gap/gap4.

ftp to the server closest to you, login as user ftp and give your full e-mail address as password. Remember when you transmit the files to set the file transfer type to binary image, otherwise you will only receive unusable garbage. Those servers will always have the latest version of GAP available.

The WWW page for the GAP distribution and the ftp directory contain the following files. Please check first which files you need, to avoid transferring those that you do not need. Except for the package archives all archives should be extracted at the ``top'' level level (i.e. they contain a gap4r3 directory).

INSTALL, INSTALL.WIN, INSTALL-MAC.TXT:

Installation files, one of which you are currently reading.

FILES:

More detailed description of the available files.

gap4r3.zoo:

This file contains the complete standard distribution of GAP version 4.3 (it does not include the packages contained in accpkg4r3.zoo and deppkg4r3.zoo).

basic4r3.zoo:

This file contains a minimal distribution of GAP version 4.3. (There are further archives with which you can ``upgrade'' it to the full version.)

gappc4r3.zoo:

This file contains a complete distribution for 32-bit Windows. It includes a precompiled binary.

gapmac4r3.zoo:

This file contains a complete distribution for Macintosh under MacOS. You will also need to obtain the binaries separately from the bin subdirectory via ftp or from the links on the Distribution web page.

accpkg4r3.zoo:

This file contains all accepted GAP packages as of the release date. It should be extracted in the pkg directory of a previously extracted GAP distribution or a user's private pkg directory.

deppkg4r3.zoo:

This file contains all deposited, but not accepted, GAP packages whose authors wish to make them available, as of the release date. They should be viewed as analogous to preprints. It should be extracted in the pkg directory of a previously extracted GAP distribution or a user's private pkg directory.

tools4r3.zoo:

This file contains additional files not provided in the standard distribution, mainly needed by package developers for the purpose of generating documentation.

util/unzoo.c:

A simple zoo archive extractor, which should be used to unpack the distribution. The bin subdirectory contains precompiled executables for common systems.

More files are available from the Distribution web page links or the following ftp subdirectories:

bin:

This directory contains executables for systems that do not come with a C compiler or where another C compiler produces a faster executable.

split:

This directory contains the complete distribution of GAP 4.3 in several smaller archives.

accpkg:

This directory contains all accepted GAP packages in case you don't want to load the comprehensive accpkg archive.

deposit/pkg:

This directory contains all deposited but not yet accepted GAP packages whose authors wish to make them available, in case you don't want to load the comprehensive deppkg archive.

73.3 GAP for UNIX

GAP runs very well under UNIX. In fact it is being developed on UNIX workstations (and PCs under Linux). GAP running on any UNIX machine should behave exactly as described in the manual.

GAP has successfully been compiled and installed on the following UNIX machines:

DECalpha under OSF 3.2 with GNU cc 2 or cc,
HP9000 under HP-UX with GNU cc 2, 
IBM PC under Linux with GNU cc 2, 
IBM RS/6000 & AIX with GNU cc 2, SGI Mips under IRIX 5/6 with gcc2 or
cc, Sun Sparc under Solaris with GCC 2 or cc. 

We hope that compiling and installing GAP on another UNIX machine does not pose any problem. If it does, please inform us of your problems (and, if possible, of your solution).

The section Installation of GAP for UNIX describes how you install GAP on a UNIX machine. See Chapter Running GAP for information about command line options that GAP accepts under UNIX.

73.4 Installation of GAP for UNIX

Installing GAP on a UNIX machine is fairly easy. Get the files described in Getting GAP and decide into which directory you want to install GAP 4.3. If you will be the only user using GAP, you probably should install it in your home directory. If other users will be also using GAP, you should install it in a public place, such as /usr/local/lib/. GAP will be installed in a subdirectory gap4r3 of this directory. You can later move GAP to a different location. For example you can first install it in your home directory and when it works move it to /usr/local/lib/.

The following installation example assumes that you (as user you on the machine unix) are installing GAP into the directory /usr/local/lib on a Pentium Pro running Linux.

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.

If you encounter problems please also see section If Things Go Wrong of this document.

Get the distribution gap4r3.zoo and the source for the zoo archive extractor unzoo.c. How you can get those files is described in the section Getting GAP. Remember that the distribution consists of binary files and that you must transmit them in binary mode.

Compile the zoo archive extractor unzoo with the command

you@unix> cc -o unzoo -DSYS_IS_UNIX -O unzoo.c
you@unix> ls -l unzoo
-rwxr-xr-x you 45056 Nov 3 10:11 unzoo
you@unix> 

Now unpack the distribution with the command

you@unix> ./unzoo -x gap4r3.zoo
gap4r3/doc/aboutgap.tex -- extracted as text
gap4r3/doc/aggroup.tex  -- extracted as text
[many more lines]
you@unix> 

(Messages of the form: /bin/mkdir: cannot create directory are harmless and can be ignored. They stem from issuing mkdir calls for top level directories every time a new subdirectory is created.)

If you got not the full distribution file but several small files, extract all of them (except the bug fixes and GAP packages!) in this way.

(Afterwards you will not need the file gap4r3.zoo any longer. If you are short of disk space you can remove it now.)

you@unix> rm gap4r3.zoo

Now go into the directory gap4r3. If there is a bug fix (there are none in the initial release but invariably some follow later and are deposited in the bugfixes directory on our ftp server(s). Starting with release 4.3, bugfixes will be comprehensive and you need only the most recent bugfix), extract it while in the gap4r3 directory. (The bug fixes extract only on this level of the directory hierarchy to make them applicable even if you chose later to rename the root directory of your GAP distribution.)

The program may ask you for confirmation to overwrite files, you should give this permission.

you@unix> cd gap4r3
you@unix> ../unzoo -x ../fix4r3n3.zoo
[extraction information]

If you got any GAP packages, extract them in the pkg subdirectory in the same way. For example if you got the accpkg4r3.zoo and deppkg4r3.zoo archives, you would issue:

you@unix> cd pkg
you@unix> ../../unzoo -x ../../accpkg4r3.zoo
you@unix> ../../unzoo -x ../../deppkg4r3.zoo
you@unix> cd ..

There is a little more to do to install the GAP packages but (particularly for those packages with a C code component) it's only appropriate to complete each GAP package's installation after GAP has been compiled.

The directories trans, small and prim contain data libraries. If you are short of disk space you can erase some of them, and any of the GAP package directories in pkg that you have decided you don't need, but then of course you will not be able to access these data or packages.

Under UNIX, we now use the ``autoconfig'' method to take care of system dependencies. (See Porting GAP if this is not working on your machine.)

If you are installing GAP on various systems that share a file system then all the above steps have essentially been done for all but the first system and on succeeding systems these steps are replaced by (fairly obviously) changing to the gap4r3 directory. However, before proceeding with the following steps, on each other machine you must first remove the files config.cache and config.status created on the previous machine!

Now run the shell script configure:

you@unix> ./configure
checking host system type... i686-unknown-linux2.0.27
[many more lines]

This will automatically detect the machine and compiler target. The process will automatically create an appropriate binary subdirectory. It also creates a Makefile that will be used to compile GAP on this machine. Simply call make:

you@unix> make
[many lines of further configuration and compilation]

The compilation process creates the object files and the executable in the directory

/usr/local/lib/gap4r3/bin/target/

where target is the name printed by the first configure (and /usr/local/lib the directory in which you installed GAP). In our example the executable will be created as

/usr/local/lib/gap4r3/bin/i686-unknown-linux2.0.27/gap

If configure or make fails, see section Known Problems of the Configure Process for a description of some remedies. If all of these fail, please inform us at gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk.

If you have UNIX experience you might want to change the compilation options to obtain a better performance. Section Optimization and Compiler Options explains how to do this. In particular, if you have little system memory, you might want to remove debugging information from the binary to create a smaller file. This is done by the UNIX strip command which gets invoked by:

you@unix> make strip

In order to test your compilation now run the newly created executable. You should get the GAP banner and then the GAP prompt. (The process of starting GAP may take a little while.)

you@unix> cd ..
you@unix> bin/i686-unknown-linux2.0.27/gap -l /usr/local/lib/gap4r3
[... lines deleted]
gap> 

(Having to give the library path with the -l option each time would be a bit tedious. Below we will therefore install a shell script to start GAP.)

Try a few things to see if the compilation succeeded.

gap> 2 * 3 + 4;
10
gap> Factorial( 30 );
265252859812191058636308480000000
gap> Size( SymmetricGroup( 10 ) );
3628800
gap> Factors( 10^42 + 1 );
[ 29, 101, 281, 9901, 226549, 121499449, 4458192223320340849 ]
gap> m11 := Group((1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11),(3,7,11,8)(4,10,5,6));;
gap> Size( m11 );
7920
gap> Factors( 7920 );
[ 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 11 ]
gap> Length( ConjugacyClasses( m11 ) );
10 

Especially try the command line editing and history facilities, because they are probably the most machine dependent feature of GAP. Enter a few commands and then make sure that ctr-P redisplays the last command, that ctr-E moves the cursor to the end of the line, that ctr-B moves the cursor back one character, and that ctr-D deletes single characters. So, after entering the above commands, typing

ctr-P ctr-P ctr-E ctr-B ctr-B ctr-B ctr-B ctr-D 1 return

should give the following lines:

gap> Factors( 7921 );
[ 89, 89 ]

If you can compile but command line editing does not work you can always start GAP with option -n to disable command line editing. In such a case however we would like to hear about such problems.

If your operating system has job control, make sure that you can still stop GAP, which is usually done by pressing ctr-Z.

The make process should also have created a shell script gap.sh in the bin subdirectory. This file already contains proper directory paths and it should be possible to start GAP by simply calling this script. Still, you might want to edit it to give further default command line options or modify the default memory.

Execute the script to start GAP again

you@unix> bin/gap.sh

you@unix> chmod +x bin/gap.sh

Then copy this script into a directory in your search path, for example /usr/local/bin/ as gap (or gap4 if you also have GAP 3 running on the same machine). (If you are using the C-shell, you will also have to rehash, so that the C-shell adds gap to its internal tables). When you later move GAP to another location you only need to edit this script.

There also is a shell script gac in the same place that can be used to invoke the compiler. Depending on your installation you also might want to copy it in a directory in your search path.

Now you should be able to start GAP by its name:

you@unix> cd ~
you@unix> gap

(If you get an error message ``hmm, I cannot find lib/init.g'' you are starting the pure binary. It needs to find the library which is given via the command line parameter -l.)

A set of test files is provided, running them all takes some 40 minutes on a Pentium Pro 200 MHz. As a quick test we start combinat.tst first.

gap> Filename( DirectoriesLibrary("tst"), "combinat.tst" );
"/usr/local/lib/gap4r3/tst/combinat.tst"
gap> ReadTest(last);
+ $ld: combinat.tst,v 4.7 1997/11/21 10:19:47 ahulpke Exp $
+ GAP4stones: 27801
true

The number given as GAP4stones will vary, depending on the speed of your machine.

Now use Read (not ReadTest) to read the file testall.g to run all available test files. This is not a necessary part of the installation, it only serves as a confirmation that everything went OK. The full test suite takes some time (almost 2 hours on a Pentium III/500) and uses quite a bit of memory (around 100MB), so you may wish to skip this step or run only part of the tests. This does no harm.

gap> Filename( DirectoriesLibrary("tst"), "testall.g" );
"/usr/local/lib/gap4r3/tst/testall.g"
gap> Read(last);
[lines omitted]
test file         GAP4stones     time(msec)
-------------------------------------------
testing: ./tst/boolean.tst
boolean.tst                0              0
testing: ./tst/unknown.tst
unknown.tst                0             10
testing: ./tst/gaussian.tst
gaussian.tst               0            250
[further lines omitted]

You can ignore warnings from weakptr.tst, which stem from garbage collections occurring at different times, and those from grpconst.tst which stem from differences in available GAP packages.

The information about the manual is system independent, you can find it in section The Documentation.

Now you should finish the installation for the GAP packages you intend to install. First do:

you@unix> cd pkg

Each GAP package has a README, which details the additional steps necessary for installation of the package. Some of the GAP packages are written entirely in GAP; for these once you have installed them on one system there is no further work required on other systems sharing the same file system. For the packages with a C code component, generally one must do ./configure and make after changing to the package's directory, e.g. for the ACE package you usually only need to do:

you@unix> cd ace
you@unix> ./configure
you@unix> make
you@unix> cd ..

For other systems sharing the same file system you need to repeat these steps for each system; the appropriate time is immediately after compiling GAP on each system.

Some GAP packages are set up to load (or provide the documentation) automatically. To enable this, after installing all the packages you think you will need, you should list all the GAP packages you have installed in a file ALLPKG in the pkg directory (see Section Loading a GAP Package in the Reference Manual for details); an easy way to do this under UNIX is by issuing the command

find * -type d -maxdepth 0 -print > ALLPKG

Please see Chapter GAP Packages for more details on the installation of GAP packages.

If you want to install GAP also on different architectures, which share the same file system with the machine on which you just installed GAP log into these machines and go to the GAP home directory. You do not need to extract any new files, simply execute the same ``configure/make'' process which has been described above again (but remember to remove the files config.cache and config.status, each time). Make sure also, however, that you copy the bin/gap.sh and bin/gac shell scripts created by the make process, each time, because they are system dependent and will be overwritten when compiling on each new system.

A few final reminders:

• Make sure that you got and installed the most recent bugfix.

• We would appreciate after installation your sending us a short note at gap@dcs.st-and.ac.uk (even if you have installed GAP 3 before). Generally, we do not reply to such emails; we only use them to gain some idea of how many people use GAP and of the machines/operating systems on which GAP has been successfully installed.

• We also suggest that you subscribe to our gap-forum mailing list; see the GAP web pages for details. Whenever there is a bug fix or new release of GAP this is where it is announced. The gap-forum also deals with user questions of a general nature; bug reports and other problems you have while installing and/or using GAP should be sent to gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk.

That's all, your installation should be complete. We hope that you will enjoy using GAP. Remember, if you have problems, do not hesitate to contact us at gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk. See Section If Things Go Wrong for what to include in a bug report.

73.5 Known Problems of the Configure Process

If make complains ``Do not know how to make xyz'' but xyz is an existing file, it is likely that the dates of the files were not extracted properly (Alpha-OSF machines are prone to this). Call

touch * cnf/* src/*

Sometimes the configure process does not properly figure out the ``inline'' compiler command. If you get error messages that complain that ``inline'' is unknown, edit the file config.h in the bin/target subdirectory and replace the line

/* #undef inline */

#define inline

The configure script respects compiler settings given in environment variables. However such settings may conflict with the automatic configuration process. If configure produces strange error messages about not being able to run the compiler, check whether environment variables that might affect the compilation (in particular CC, LD, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS and C_INCLUDE_PATH) are set and reset them using unsetenv.

Some users reported problems with make, while the GNU version gmake worked. Thus if problems occur you should try gmake instead if it is installed on your machine.

73.6 Problems on Particular Systems

The highest levels of optimization of the OSF/4 C compiler cc on the Compaq alpha chip make assumptions about the use of pointers which are not valid for GAP, and produce executables that can crash; -O3 seems to be safe, but -O4 and -fast are not.

On Sun and IRIX systems which are capable of running in 32 or 64 bit modes, it is possible to build a 64 bit version of GAP, but special procedures are needed (and, on Suns, a compiler bug must be circumvented). If you wish to compile on such a system, please send an email to gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk.

73.7 Optimization and Compiler Options

Because of the large variety of different versions of UNIX and different compilers it is possible that the configure process will not chose best possible optimization level, but you might need to tell make about it.

If you want to compile GAP with further compiler options (for example specific processor optimizations) you will have to assign them to the variable COPTS as in the following example when calling make:

make COPTS=-option

The configure process also introduces some default compiler options. (See the Makefile in the bin directory for details.) You can eliminate these by assigning the variable CFLAGS (which contains the default options and COPTS) to the desired list of compiler options in the same way as you would assign COPTS.

The recommended C compiler for GAP is the GNU C compiler gcc, or a related compiler such as egcs. There are two reasons for this recommendation: firstly we use gcc in GAP development and so this combination has been far more heavily tested than any other and secondly, we have found that it generally produces code which is faster than that produced by other compilers.

If you do wish to use another compiler, you should remove config.cache and config.status in the GAP root directory, set the environment variable CC to the name of your preferred compiler and then rerun configure and make. You may have to experiment to determine the best values for CFLAGS and/or COPTS as described above. Please let us (gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk) know the results of your experiments.

73.8 GAP for Windows

It is possible to compile GAP for 32-bit Windows using the Cygnus cygwin32 implementation of GCC. We provide such a binary, and have tested that runs under the English version of Windows 98. It is likely that it will also work under later versions such as WindowsNT and Windows XP.

It is likely that features of GAP like Process, Exec or the compiler, that rely on a UNIX environment will not work under Windows.

The following sections contain information about GAP that is specific to this port of GAP (simply called GAP for Windows below).

To run GAP under Windows you need an IBM PC compatible with an Intel Intel 80486, or Intel Pentium processor or better. The system must have at least 16 MByte of main memory and a harddisk. The operating system must be Windows 95 or better.

The section Copyright of GAP for Windows describes the copyright as it applies to the executable version that we distribute. The section Installation of GAP for Windows describes how you install GAP for Windows.

The compiler we are using to create the Windows binary (Cygnus GNUWin32) provides a C-library that emulates all standard UNIX commands. There are however a few low-level routines that have to be called system-specific and for which we have not yet found out how to do it under Windows. We will try to fix these in a future version. If you have experience in Windows programming and know how to do such things we would very much welcome help.

73.9 Copyright of GAP for Windows

In addition to the general copyright for GAP set forth in the Copyright the following terms apply to GAP for Windows.

The executable of GAP for Windows that we distribute was compiled with The gnuwin32 compiler of the cygwin package. This compiler can be obtained by anonymous ftp from a variety of general public FTP archives. Many thanks to the Free Software Foundation and Cygnus Support for this amazing piece of work.

The GNU C compiler is

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Note that the GNU GPL states that the mere act of compiling does not affect the copyright status of GAP.

The compiler is copyright under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). You can find details under http://www.cygnus.com/misc/gnu-win32/faq.html

The Cygwin32 API library is also covered by the GNU GPL. The executable we provide is linked against this library (and in the process includes GPL'd Cygwin32 glue code). This means that the executable falls under the GPL too, i.e., is distributed freely, which it basically does anyhow.

73.10 Installation of GAP for Windows

Installing GAP under 32-bit Windows should be fairly easy.

In the following, we assume that you install GAP in the directory

C:\GAP4R3

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.

If you encounter problems please also see section If Things Go Wrong of this document.

Get the Windows-specific files gappc4r3.zoo and the Windows version of the zoo archive extractor unzoo.exe, and copy them in the C: directory.

How you can get those files is described in the section Getting GAP. Remember that the distribution consists of binary files and that you must transmit them in binary mode. See http://www.gap-system.org/Info/mime.html if you have problems with loading the files.

(The zoo archives we provide for GAP contain comments which indicate whether files are text or binary files. The unzoo we provide uses these comments to translate the ``LF'' line endings we use to the Windows style ``CRLF''. If you use another zoo extractor you might lose this information and end up with files that might not conform to your operation system standards.)

Open a window with the MS-DOS Command Prompt and go to the C: directory.

C:\WINDOWS> cd c:\

Now unpack the distribution with the command

C:\> unzoo -x gappc4r3.zoo
gap4r3\bin\gap.bat -- extracted
gap4r3\doc\aboutgap.tex -- extracted
gap4r3\doc\aggroup.tex -- extracted
[many more lines]

(Afterwards you will not need the file gappc4r3.zoo any longer. If you are short of disk space you can remove it now.)

C:\> del gappc4r3.zoo

Now go into the directory GAP4R3. If there is a bug fixes (there are none in the initial release but invariably some follow later and are deposited in the bugfixes directory on our ftp server(s). Starting with release 4.3, bugfixes will be comprehensive and you need only the most recent bugfix), extract it while in the gap4r3 directory. (The bug fixes extract only on this level of the directory hierarchy to make them applicable even if you chose later to rename the root directory of your GAP distribution.)

The program may ask you for confirmation to overwrite files, you should give this permission.

C:\> cd GAP4R3
C:\GAP4R3> ../unzoo -x ../fix4r3n3.zoo
[extraction information]

If the bugfixes provide a new binary, unpack the corresponding file wbinXXX.zoo in the same way. It overwrites the old binary.

If you got any GAP packages, extract them in the pkg subdirectory in the same way. Some GAP packages are set up to load (or provide the documentation) automatically. To enable this, after installing all the packages you think you will need, you should list all the GAP packages you have installed in a file ALLPKG in the pkg directory (see Section Loading a GAP Package in the Reference Manual for details). (Any GAP package that has a C code component is essentially UNIX-dependent and you may as well delete those; such packages typically describe in their README files that they require configure and make to complete their installation or have a src directory.)

The directories trans, small and prim contain data libraries. If you are short of disk space you can erase some of them and any GAP package directories in the pkg directory that you don't need, but then of course you will not be able to access these data and packages.

We provide a precompiled binary in the bin subdirectory, so there is no need to compile GAP yourself. The provided binary should work under Windows9x and Windows NT.

Now start GAP either by calling

C:\GAP4R3> bin\gapw95.exe

C:\GAP4R3\BIN

You should get the GAP banner and then the GAP prompt. (The process of starting GAP may take a little while.)

Try a few things to see if the binary works.

gap> 2 * 3 + 4;
10
gap> Factorial( 30 );
265252859812191058636308480000000
gap> Size( SymmetricGroup( 10 ) );
3628800
gap> Factors( 10^42 + 1 );
[ 29, 101, 281, 9901, 226549, 121499449, 4458192223320340849 ]
gap> m11 := Group((1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11),(3,7,11,8)(4,10,5,6));;
gap> Size( m11 );
7920
gap> Factors( 7920 );
[ 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 11 ]
gap> Length( ConjugacyClasses( m11 ) );
10 

Especially try the command line editing and history facilities, because they are probably the most machine dependent feature of GAP.

Note that GAP is developed under UNIX and therefore the key commands are rather UNIX-type then Windows type. We try also to recognize some common Windows key commands such as the arrow keys, but it is likely that not all Windows-special key commands will be recognized: in general GAP will not conform to standard Windows ``look-and feel''. (See below on how to enable cut-and-paste.)

Enter a few commands and then make sure that ctr-P redisplays the last command, that ctr-E moves the cursor to the end of the line, that ctr-B moves the cursor back one character, and that ctr-D deletes single characters. So, after entering the above commands, typing

ctr-P ctr-P ctr-E ctr-B ctr-B ctr-B ctr-B ctr-D 1 return

should give the following lines:

gap> Factors( 7921 );
[ 89, 89 ] 

You also might want to enable cut-and-paste in the GAP window and select a more pleasant icon. You should be able to do this with the PIF file gap.pif in the bin directory (it might show up only as GAP with an MSDOS icon), if necessary following the instructions on the web page http://www.gap-system.org/Info4/windows.html. (If this PIF file does not work, you will have to create a new PIF file. For details on how to do this, see the Documentation provided by Microsoft.)

The information about the manual is system independent, you can find it in section The Documentation.

A few final reminders:

• Make sure that you got and installed the most recent (and probably the corresponding binary).

• We would appreciate after installation your sending us a short note at gap@dcs.st-and.ac.uk (even if you have installed GAP 3 before). Generally, we do not reply to such emails; we only use them to gain some idea of how many people use GAP and of the machines/operating systems on which GAP has been successfully installed.

• We also suggest that you subscribe to our gap-forum mailing list; see the GAP web pages for details. Whenever there is a bug fix or new release of GAP this is where it is announced. The gap-forum also deals with user questions of a general nature; bug reports and other problems you have while installing and/or using GAP should be sent to gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk.

That's all, your installation should be complete. We hope that you will enjoy using GAP. Remember, if you have problems, do not hesitate to contact us at gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk. See Section If Things Go Wrong for what to include in a bug report.

73.11 Expert Windows installation

This section decribes how to get a better shell for GAP, how to install GAP in another directory and how to test the installation.

Some users report that the rxvt shell gives a btter windows environment for cut/paste etc. You can find information on this at http://www.gap-system.org/Forum/Pasechni.1/Dima.1/Re__Wind.1/1.html

If you decide to install GAP in another directory you can do so, but you will have to edit a batch file and use this file to start GAP.

First unpack the GAP distribution in the directory you want.

Lets suppose you want GAP to reside in the directory

C:\SOFTWARE\GAP

C:\GAP4R3

You now will have to edit a batch file, that will be used to start GAP. This batch file is needed, since GAP otherwise will not find its library directories. The most natural name for this file would be

C:\SOFTWARE\GAP\GAPGAP4R3\BIN\GAP.BAT

C:\SOFTWARE\GAP\GAPGAP4R3\bin\gapw95.exe -m 14m 
  -l C:\SOFTWARE\GAP\GAPGAP4R3 %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8

C:\Program Files\GAP\GAPGAP4R3\bin\gapw95.exe -m 14m 
  -l 'C:\Program Files\GAP\GAPGAP4R3' %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8

You now should be able to start GAP by clicking this gap.bat file. You might want to copy this file gap.bat into a directory in your search path (for example the DOS directory) as gap.bat to be able to start GAP by its name from any location:

C:\WINDOWS> gap

If you want to check your installation, a set of test files is provided, This test is not a necessary part of the installation, it only serves as a confirmation that everything went OK. (Since running these tests might take several hours and requires quite a bit of free memory, you may wish to skip this step or run only part of the tests. This does no harm.)

As a quick test we start combinat.tst first.

gap> Filename( DirectoriesLibrary("tst"), "combinat.tst" );
"./tst/combinat.tst"
gap> ReadTest(last);
+ $ld: combinat.tst,v 4.7 1997/11/21 10:19:47 ahulpke Exp $
+ GAP4stones: 26801
true

Note that GAP internally uses / to separate directory names. This will be translated to backslashes for the operating system.

Now you can use Read (not ReadTest) to read the file testall.g to run all available test files. (You should not pay too much attention to the GAPstone ratings of the different files. The time measurements are not calibrated and sometimes vary substantially because further tests have been added to a file.)

gap> Filename( DirectoriesLibrary("tst"), "testall.g" );
"./tst/testall.g"
gap> Read(last);
[lines omitted]
test file     GAP4stones   time(msec)
-------------------------------------------
[further lines omitted]

You can ignore warnings from weakptr.tst, which stem from garbage collections occurring at different times, and those from grpconst.tst which stem from differences in available GAP packages.

73.12 GAP for MacOS

This section contains information about GAP that is specific to the port of GAP for Apple Macintosh systems under MacOS (simply called GAP for MacOS below).

To run GAP for MacOS you need an Apple Macintosh with a Motorola M68020, M68030, or M68040 processor, or a Power Macintosh. The computer must have at least 16MByte of (physical) memory and a harddisk. For serious calculations, much more may be needed. The operating system must be System 7 or higher. GAP for MacOS runs under System X, however only in Classic Mode.

Note that, alternatively, you can run GAP for UNIX version of GAP in the Terminal window. However, you may need additional development software, available from Apple, to compile GAP yourself. See GAP for UNIX for installation instructions.

The section Copyright of GAP for MacOS describes the copyright as it applies to the executable version that we distribute. The section Installation of GAP for MacOS describes how you install GAP for MacOS.

Please refer to the relevant sections of Chapter Running GAP in the GAP reference manual (included with the GAP distribution for an overview over the features of GAP for MacOS.

73.13 Copyright of GAP for MacOS

In addition to the general copyright for GAP set forth in the Copyright the following terms apply to GAP for the Mac.

The system dependent part of GAP for the Mac was written by Burkhard Höfling (his email address is b.hoefling@tu-bs.de). He assigns the copyright to the GAP group. Many thanks to Burkhard for his help! Burkhard Höfling's port was partly based on an earlier port of GAP for the Mac, which was done by Dave Bayer (dab@math.columbia.edu) and used the Mac Programmers Workshop (MPW) compiler. Many thanks to Dave for his work. Moreover, the built-in editor is based upon the freeware text editor PlainText by Mel Park which, in turn, uses TE32K, a TextEdit replacement by Roy Wood. It also uses Internet Config.

For technical reasons we do not distribute the Macintosh specific source and project files as part of the standard archives. If you are interested in compiling GAP yourself, we are happy to provide you with the appropriate files (contact us at gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk). The source can be compiled with CodeWarrior Pro 5 with Apple's Universal Headers 3.3 installed.

Please contact the author b.hoefling@tu-bs.de or gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk if you need further information.

73.14 Installation of GAP for MacOS

Installing GAP under MacOS is fairly easy. First, decide into which folder you want to install GAP 4.3. GAP will be installed in a subfolder gap4r3 of this folder. You can later move GAP to a different location.

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.

If you encounter problems please also see section If Things Go Wrong of this document.

Get the Mac-specific files described in Getting GAP, that is, the distribution gapmac4r3.zoo, the binary archive unzoo4r3-PPC.sit, the most recent bugfix, and the GAP application program (also called binary or executable). The GAP application program is distributed as a binary archive. It is called bin4r3-PPC.sit if no bugfixes requiring a new GAP application have been issued so far. Otherwise, it is called bin4r3nX-PPC.sit, where X is the number of the last bugfix. The latest GAP application archive is available from the GAP distribution web page, or from the mac subdirectory of the bin subdirectory on the ftp servers.

How you can get those files is described in the section Getting GAP. Remember that the distribution consists of binary files and that you must transmit them in binary mode.

If the sit files did not extract automatically click on them to extract them. If even this fails use one of the standard decompression utilities, such as Stuffit Expander.

After this process you should end up with two applications, GAP 4 PPC and unzoo 4.3 PPC.

The latter is used to uncompress the .zoo archives which contain most of GAP. The zoo archives we provide for GAP contain comments which indicate whether files are text or binary files. The unzoo we provide uses these comments. If you use another zoo extractor you might lose this information and end up with files that contain text but cannot be opened as text files.

The following installation example assumes that you are installing GAP in the folder Applications on a PowerPC Macintosh. (For a 68k Macintosh you should replace all references to PPC to ones referring to 68K

Move the file gapmac4r3.zoo into the folder Applications and drag it onto the icon of unzoo 4.3 PPC. You will get many lines of output in this window.

This should have created a folder gap4r3 in the current folder.

(You will not need the file gapmac4r3.zoo any longer. If you are short of disk space you can remove it now.)

If you got not the full distribution file but several small files, extract all of them (except the bug fixes and GAP packages!) in this way.

Move GAP 4 PPC and the bugfix file (if there is one) in the folder gap4r3. Drag the bugfix file onto the icon of unzoo 4.3 PPC to decompress it.

If you got any GAP packages, move them into the pkg folder in the folder folder gap4r3 extract them there, in the same way as the bugfix.

Some GAP packages are set up to load (or provide the documentation) automatically. To enable this, after installing all the packages you think you will need, you should list all the GAP packages you have installed in a file ALLPKG in the pkg directory (see Section Loading a GAP Package in the Reference Manual for details).

After extraction you may discard all .zoo files if you are short of disk space.

The folders trans, small and prim contain data libraries. If you are short of disk space you can erase some of them and any GAP package directories in the pkg directory that you don't need, but then of course you will not be able to access these data and packages. (Any GAP package that has a C code component is essentially UNIX-dependent and you may as well delete those; such packages typically describe in their README files that they require configure and make to complete their installation or have a src directory.)

Before you use GAP, you should set up GAP's memory allocation, by setting appropriate values by selecting the GAP application and Get Info... in the Finder's File menu (in order to be able to modify the values there, you have to do this before you launch GAP).

The maximum amount of workspace GAP can use depends on the amount of memory the Finder allocates to GAP when it is launched. The maximum amount of GAP workspace is this value, minus a certain amount used internally by the GAP application (for the PPC version, currently around 1.7 Megabytes, plus the size of the GAP application if you do not use virtual memory, and 2.9 Megabytes for the 68K version), minus any additional amount set with the -a, -P or -W command line options (see below).

You can find information about the amount of free GAP workspace, the total amount of available workspace, and the remaining free memory, by choosing About GAP in the Apple menu.

To ensure efficient operation, you should not allocate more memory to GAP than the amount of physical memory in your computer. If you are not using virtual memory, the amount may have to be considerably less (depending on your system and the number of other applications which you may want to run at the same time).

If you notice heavy disk use during garbage collections, this is a clear indication that you have allocated too much memory to GAP.

In order to test your installation now run the GAP application by clicking on GAP 4 PPC. You should get the GAP banner and then the GAP prompt in a window titled GAP log. (The process of starting GAP may take a while.)

Try a few things to see if the installation succeeded.

gap> 2 * 3 + 4;
10
gap> Factorial( 30 );
265252859812191058636308480000000
gap> Size( SymmetricGroup( 10 ) );
3628800
gap> Factors( 10^42 + 1 );
[ 29, 101, 281, 9901, 226549, 121499449, 4458192223320340849 ]
gap> m11 := Group((1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11),(3,7,11,8)(4,10,5,6));;
gap> Size( m11 );
7920
gap> Factors( 7920 );
[ 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 11 ]
gap> Length( ConjugacyClasses( m11 ) );
10 

A set of test files is provided, running them all probably takes some 40 minutes on a 200 MHz PPC machine. As a quick test we start combinat.tst first. Initially we must ensure that the print width of GAP is 80 characters per line which we achieve with the SizeScreen command (otherwise we will be swamped with error messages).

gap> SizeScreen([80,]);;
gap> Filename( DirectoriesLibrary("tst"), "combinat.tst" );
"./tst/combinat.tst"
gap> ReadTest(last);
+ $ld: combinat.tst,v 4.7 1997/11/21 10:19:47 ahulpke Exp $
+ GAP4stones: 27801
true

Now use Read (not ReadTest) to read the file testall.g to run all available test files. This is not a necessary part of the installation; it only serves as a confirmation that everything went OK. The full test suite takes some time (almost 2 hours on a Pentium III/500) and uses quite a bit of memory (around 100MB), so you may wish to skip this step or run only part of the tests. This does no harm.

You should not pay too much attention to the GAPstone ratings of the different files. The time measurements are not calibrated and sometimes vary substantially because further tests have been added to a file.

gap> Filename( DirectoriesLibrary("tst"), "testall.g" );
"./tst/testall.g"
gap> Read(last);
[lines omitted]
test file     GAP4stones   time(msec)
-------------------------------------------
unknown.tst      15238       21  (next ~ 0 sec)
listgen.tst      118000       5  (next ~ 0 sec)
gaussian.tst      2738      325  (next ~ 0 sec)
[further lines omitted]

You can ignore warnings from weakptr.tst, which stem from garbage collections occurring at different times, and those from grpconst.tst which stem from differences in available GAP packages.

The information about the manual is system independent; you can find it in section The Documentation.

A few final reminders:

• Make sure that you got and installed the most recent bugfix.

• We would appreciate after installation your sending us a short note at gap@dcs.st-and.ac.uk (even if you have installed GAP 3 before). Generally, we do not reply to such emails; we only use them to gain some idea of how many people use GAP and of the machines/operating systems on which GAP has been successfully installed.

• We also suggest that you subscribe to our gap-forum mailing list; see the GAP web pages for details. Whenever there is a bug fix or new release of GAP this is where it is announced. The gap-forum also deals with user questions of a general nature; bug reports and other problems you have while installing and/or using GAP should be sent to gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk.

That's all, your installation should be complete. Please refer to Chapter Running GAP in the GAP reference manual for a description of some special features and options of GAP for MacOS.

We hope that you will enjoy using GAP. Remember, if you have problems, do not hesitate to contact us at gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk. See Section If Things Go Wrong for what to include in a bug report.

73.15 Testing for the System Architecture

#define C_STACK_ALIGN      2

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