GAP Installation Instructions

The Basic Steps of a GAP Installation

Note that 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 which achieve this for you automatically. Otherwise, to install GAP using the source distribution, perform the following steps:

• Choose your preferred archive format and download the corresponding archive.
• Unpack the archive.
• On UNIX, Linux or macOS: compile the GAP core system by running ./configure; make in the unpacked directory.
• On UNIX, Linux or macOS: change to the pkg subdirectory and call ../bin/BuildPackages.sh to run the script which will build most of the packages that require compilation (provided sufficiently many libraries, headers and tools are available). If something doesn't work on your system, please refer to the README file provided with the corresponding package.
• On Windows: no compilation is needed, since compiled executables for GAP and some packages are already provided by the .exe installer or -win.zip archive.
• Adjust some links/scripts/icons etc., depending on your system, to make the new version of GAP available to the users of your machine.
• Optional: run a few tests.

For detailed installation instructions for the GAP source distribution on UNIX (which includes Linux), macOS, and on Windows see the INSTALL.md file, which may be found in the GAP root directory after unpacking the archive with the GAP distribution.

Optional: GAP starts up much faster using a so called workspace. A workspace can be generated and used as shown in the script CreateWorkspace.sh.

Note that the CreateWorkspace.sh script may require chmod +x CreateWorkspace.sh first.