Alternative Ways of Getting GAP

We strongly recommend to obtain and install GAP as described on the page Downloading and Installing GAP 4, since to obtain a fully functional GAP installation you need not only to compile the core system, but also some of its packages. You might want to consider one of the alternative installation methods below which simplify the installation mostly by offering precompiled binaries.

GAP Rsync

Frank Lübeck offers a Linux binary distribution via remote syncronization with a reference installation which includes all packages and some optimisations.

BOB

Max Neunhöffer offers BOB - a tool to download and build GAP and its packages from source for Linux and Mac OS X. You only download BOB who does all the rest for you. You need a C-compiler and some libraries installed on your system but BOB will tell you exactly what is missing.

GAP Experimental Windows Installer

Alexander Konovalov offers an Experimental GAP Installer for Windows. It provides the standard installation procedure that will guide you through all steps of the installation process.

If you cannot download GAP directly from the web pages, there are some further alternatives.

GAP FTP Server

You can use anonymous ftp. The following ftp server carries the official GAP distribution:

• ftp://ftp.gap-system.org/pub/gap St Andrews, UK

Trying GAP

It is possible to get an account in the MEDICIS computers in order to try GAP, as well as other computer algebra systems. To get more information you can read their web page or send an email.

GAP on CDs

There are currently, to our knowledge, some commercially available CDs which include some version of GAP, e. g.

• The CD included with the book Algebra Interactive published by Springer, includes GAP 3.4.4.

Such CDs inevitably fail to keep up with the release of new versions of GAP, so if you obtain GAP by this route, you should be aware that you probably do not have a current version, and that we can give only very limited support to users of old versions.

Finally, if nothing else works, look in FAQ at the answer to the question I cannot FTP that much data. Can I get a CD?.