[ref] 73 Installing GAP

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# 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

If there is a bugfix (starting with release 4.3, bugfixes for a release will be comprehensive), extract it:

    unzoo -x ../fix4r3nX.zoo

Then, to compile the GAP binary call

    ./configure
    make

and you will get a shell script `bin/gap.sh` to start GAP which you can copy in a standard path, e.g. copy the script to say `/usr/local/bin` and rename it to how you expect users to call GAP (either `gap` or `gap4` is usual).

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

If the shell complains that it cannot execute or find `gap.sh` check the permissions of the file by doing a `ls -l bin/gap.sh`. The permissions should include execute permissions, if they don't you can set them by

    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

while still in the `pkg` directory.

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/*

from the main GAP directory (this ought to reset the date of all relevant files to ``now'') and try again.

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 */

by

    #define inline

and then try to compile again.

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

If there are several compiler options or if they contain spaces you might have to enclose them by quotes to avoid depending on the shell you are using.

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

on a Windows98 machine. (For experts (or users without write permission in the `C:` directory) it is possible to install GAP in another directory, but this will require specialist knowledge (editing a batch file) which many Windows users do not possess. See section Expert Windows installation for details on how to do this.)

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

or by starting the program `gapw95.exe` in the directory

    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

Extract GAP (as described in the previous section for `C:`) in this directory. (alternatively, you can also first unpack it in

    C:\GAP4R3

test it there first, and afterwards move it in the desired location.)

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

This file should contain the following single line (which might be broken over in several lines in this instructions since the page width is limited):

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

If the path includes blanks (such as `Program Files`), you will have to enclose the `-l` argument in apostrophes:

    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

- `ARCH_IS_UNIX( ) F`

  tests whether GAP is running on a UNIX system.

- `ARCH_IS_MAC( ) F`

  tests whether GAP is running on a Macintosh under MacOS

- `ARCH_IS_WINDOWS( ) F`

  tests whether GAP is running on a Windows system.

  ## 73.16 Porting GAP

  Porting GAP to a new operating system should not be very difficult. However, GAP expects some features from the operating system and the compiler and porting GAP to a system or with a compiler that do not have those features may prove very difficult.

  The design of GAP makes it quite portable. GAP consists of a small kernel written in the programming language C and a large library written in the programming language provided by the GAP kernel, which is also called GAP.

  Once the kernel has been ported, the library poses no additional problem, because all those functions only need the kernel to work, they need no additional support from the environment.

  The kernel itself is separated into a large part that is largely operating system and compiler independent, and one file that contains all the operating system and compiler dependent functions. Usually only this file must be modified to port GAP to a new operating system.

  Now let us take a look at the minimal support that GAP needs from the operating system and the machine:

  You need enough main memory in your computer. The size of the GAP kernel varies between 1.5 and 2.5 MByte (depending on the machine). The GAP library additionally takes a minimum of 10MByte and the library of functions that GAP loads takes up another 1.5 MByte. So it is clear that at least 16 MByte of main memory are required to do any serious work with GAP.

  Additionally, the GAP kernel needs a flat address space, that is all the memory is available in one contiguous chunk.

  Note that this implies that there is no point in trying to port GAP to plain MS-DOS running on IBM PCs and compatibles. The version of GAP for IBM PC compatibles that we provide runs on machines with the Intel 80486, Pentium or beyond processor under 32-bit Windows. (This is also necessary, because, as just mentioned, GAP wants to view its memory as a large flat address space.)

  Next let us turn to the requirements for the C compiler and its library.

  As was already mentioned, the GAP kernel is written in the C language. We have tried to use as few features of the C language as possible. GAP has been compiled without problems with compilers that adhere to the old definition from Kernighan and Ritchie, and with compilers that adhere to the new definition from the ANSI-C standard.

  Porting GAP to another UNIX should not be hard. You need some very basic understanding of C and UNIX. If you plan to port GAP to a non-UNIX system please contact gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk.

  The configuration script runs various tests to determine the configuration of your system. It produces a file `bin/`architecture`/config.h` which contains definitions according to the test results. It might be, however, that the tests used don't produce on your machine the results they are expected to or that further tests are necessary. If this is the case the easiest way is to edit the `config.h` script, remove all object files and call `make` in the `bin/`architecture`` subdirectory. If you have to resort to changing or amending this file, please tell us what had to be changed (mail to gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk). If you had to add further definitions please also tell what properties of your system these `define`s represent.

  If GAP compiles but crashes while reading the library or during a garbage collection with a bus error it is possible that the configuration script did not guess the permitted pointer alignment correctly. This value is stored in the line

      #define C_STACK_ALIGN      2

  of `config.h`. Increase the value to the next power of 2 ( £ 8) and compile GAP anew.

  There is still a `Makefile` in the `src` directory, but it is not used by the configuration process any longer. As a last resort you might want to try this file, but please still report your problems to `gap-trouble`.

  ## 73.17 The Documentation

  The GAP manual is distributed in various ``books''. The standard distribution contains four of them (as well as a comprehensive index). GAP packages (see Chapter GAP Packages and, in particular, Section Loading a GAP Package) provide their own documentation in their own `doc` directories.

  All documentation will be available automatically for the online help (see Section Tut:Help in the Tutorial and Chapter The Help System in this manual for more details).

  There also is (if installed) an HTML version of some books that can be viewed with an HTML browser, see Changing the Help Viewer. Some of these use symbol fonts for mathematical formulae. To get them correctly displayed (only in a browser which uses a graphical display), you may want to adjust the font setup for your browser. See HTML Font Setup below for a hint.

  The manual is also available in `dvi` and `pdf` format. In the full UNIX distribution (`gap4r3.zoo`) these files are included in the directory `gap4r3/doc` in the subdirectories `tut` (a beginner's tutorial), `ref` (the reference manual), `prg` (programmer's tutorial), `ext` (programmer's reference) and `new` (new material that might still change in future versions).

  If you downloaded another distribution file, you can get the missing `dvi` (resp. `pdf`) files by downloading the archive `docdvi4r3.zoo` (resp. `docpdf4r3.zoo`) from the same place you got GAP.

  If you want to use these manual files with the online help you may check (or make sure) that your system provides some additional software like

  `xpdf`
    see http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/

  `xdvi`
    see any of the CTAN sites/mirrors; the main site is: http://www.ctan.org/

    and the mirrors are listed at: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/CTAN.sites

    At any of the mirrors the path of the file containing the `xdvi` archive (after the main site name) is `tex-archive/dviware/xdvi/xdvi.tar.gz`.

  `acroread`
    see http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html

  As a complete beginner, we suggest you read the tutorial first for an introduction to GAP 4. Then start to use the system with extensive use of the online help system (see Section Tut:Help in the Tutorial and Chapter The Help System in this manual).

  If you have experience with GAP 3, it might be still worthwhile to at least glance over the first chapters of the tutorial. You however should read the last chapter of the tutorial, ``Migrating to GAP4''. This chapter gives a summary of changes between GAP 3 and GAP 4 that will affect the user. It also explains a ``compatibility mode'' you may turn on to make GAP 4 behave a bit more like GAP 3.

  As some of the manuals are quite large, you should not immediately print them. If you start using GAP it will be helpful to print the tutorial (and probably the first chapters of the reference manual). There is no compelling reason to print the whole of the reference manual, better use the online help which provides useful search features.

  ## 73.18 HTML Font Setup

  The HTML pages of the manual use the `symbol` font to display non-latin symbols in mathematical formulae. This font might not be enabled by default on your browser. The documentation of the `tth` converter we use http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/Xfonts.html

  describes how to set up this font for use in Netscape or Konqueror. For Netscape on UNIX, essentially you want:

      Netscape*documentFonts.charset*adobe-fontspecific:   iso-8859-1

  in your `.Xresources` or `.Xdefaults` file.

  A good test to see if you need this remedy is to check the display of: {1,...,n}; if you see an ellipsis (three dots) between the commas, you are ok, and if you see `1/4` you need the remedy!

  If you have problems viewing symbol fonts on the Mac, you may have to choose Mac font encoding, sometimes called MacRoman, or Western (Mac). More information about the font setup on Macintoshes can be found http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/manual/sec12.html, Section 12.3.

  ## 73.19 If Things Go Wrong

  This section lists a few common problems when installing or running GAP and their remedies. Also see the FAQ list on the GAP web pages at http://www.gap-system.org/Info/faq.html

  GAP starts with a warning ```hmm, I cannot find 'lib/init.g'`''.
    You either started only the binary or did not edit the shell script/batch file to give the correct library path. You must start the binary with the command line option `-l` path where path is the path to the GAP home directory. See section Command Line Options in the reference manual.

  When starting, GAP produces error messages about undefined variables.
    You might have a `.gaprc` file that was intended for GAP 3 but is not compatible with GAP 4. See section The .gaprc file in chapter Running GAP of the reference manual.

  GAP stops with an error message: ```cannot extend the workspace any more`''.
    Your calculation exceeded the available memory. Most likely you asked GAP to do something which required more memory than you have (as listing all elements of S15 for example). You can use the command line option `-g` (see section Command Line Options in the reference manual) to display how much memory GAP uses. If this is below what your machine has available (this happens for example under Windows) extending the workspace is impossible. Start GAP with more memory or use the `-a` option to pre-allocate initially a large piece of workspace.

  GAP complains: ```corrupted completion file`''.
    Some library files got changed without rebuilding the completion files. This is often a sign that earlier a bugfix was not installed properly or that you changed the library yourself. In the latter case, start GAP with command line option `-N` and see section Completion Files.

  GAP stops with an error message ```exceeded the permitted memory`''.
    Your job got bigger than what is permitted by default (128MB). (This is a safety feature to avoid single jobs wrecking a multi-user system.) You can type `return;` to continue, if the error message happens repeatedly you better start the job anew and use the command line option `-o` to set a higher memory limit.

  `make` complains about not being able to find files in `cnf` or `src` which exist.
    The dates of the new files were not extracted properly (Alpha-OSF machines are prone to this). Call

        touch * cnf/* src/*

    from the main GAP directory (this ought to reset the date of all relevant files to ``now'') and try again.

  Recompilation does not actually compile changed files.
    The dates of the new files were not extracted properly. Go in the source directory and `touch` (UNIX command to change date) the new files.

  Recompilation fails or the new binary crashes.
    Call `make clean` and restart the `configure` / `make` process completely from scratch. (It is possible that the operating system and/or compiler got upgraded in the meantime and so the existing `.o` files cannot be used any longer.

  A calculation runs into an error ``no method found''.
    GAP is not able to execute a certain operation with the given arguments. Besides the possibility of bugs in the library this means two things: Either GAP truly is incapable of coping with this task (the objects might be too complicated for the existing algorithms or there might be no algorithm that can cope with the input). Another possibility is that GAP does not know that the objects have certain nice properties (like being finite) which are required for the available algorithms. See sections ApplicableMethod and KnownPropertiesOfObject.

  Problems specific to Windows

  The `gap.bat` file does not start GAP.
    Make sure you ran `instwin.bat`. If your version of Windows uses a language other than English you must still edit the resulting file `gap.bat` in the `bin` subdirectory, due to a misdesign of Windows. If the path name contains long file names or blanks, you might have to edit the file to rectify the `-l` argument or to enclose it by apostrophes.

  Windows complains `Out of environment space`.
    Click the batch file `instwin.bat` or `gap.bat` which caused the problem with the right mouse button and select `Properties`,`Memory` and increase the initial environment space to at least 1024. This will create a `pif` shortcut which should be used to start GAP.

  Command line editing does not work under Windows.
    The default key commands are UNIX-like. GAP also tries to emulate some of the special keys under Windows, however if the key repeat is set too high, Windows loses parts of the codes for these keys and thus GAP cannot recognize them. Windows98 produces the same scan code for all cursor keys. As GAP does not interface directly with the Windows machinery, there is no way around this problem so far.

  The `^`-key cannot be entered.
    This is a problem if you are running a keyboard driver for some non-english languages. These drivers catch the `^` character to produce the French circumflex accent and do not pass it properly to GAP. No fix is known.

  Cut and Paste does not work
    See http://www.gap-system.org/Info4/windows.html for a remedy.

  If all these remedies fail or you encountered a bug please send a mail to gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk. Please give:

  - a (short, if possible) self-contained excerpt of a GAP session containing both input and output that illustrates your problem (including comments of why you think it is a bug); and

  - state the type of machine, operating system, (compiler used, if UNIX/Linux) and version of GAP (for example ``gap4r3, fix1'') you are using (the line after the GAP 4 banner starting:

        GAP4, Version: 4...

    when your GAP 4 starts up, supplies the information required).

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  GAP 4 manual
  May 2002