0.1. How to install GAP
The installation of GAP is well-documented on the official webpage https://www.gap-system.org/install/. Note that the type of installation will depend on your operating system. In any case, before installing GAP, make sure you have a working C and C++ development environment installed in your system, and a GNU make.
Below, we briefly describe the steps to get GAP installed on each platform:
Linux. In this case, we need to verify first that we have the required tools to run GAP. This is done by running the following command:
sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf libtool libgmp-dev libreadline-dev zlib1g-dev
Note that this step will require admin privileges. Next, we need to download GAP from the webpage, unpack it, and run the command
./configure && make
from a terminal open in the folder where you unpacked it. This command will essentially install GAP. Finally, you will need to compile some of the packages that come with the installation. To do that, you must change to the pkg subdirectory and call
../bin/BuildPackages.sh.
Once the compilation is concluded, you can run GAP from any terminal by just typing gap.
MacOS. First, you need to check the prerequisites to install GAP, including the installation of the Apple developer tools. This is explained in the webpage above in the subsection corresponding to MacOS. Next, the installation is similar to Linux’s. That is, download GAP from the webpage, unpack it, and run
./configure && make
in a terminal open from the folder you unpacked it. After that, you will need to compile some packages in the same way it is done in Linux by changing to the pkg subdirectory and running
../bin/BuildPackages.sh.
You can also install GAP using the package manager Homebrew. See https://github.com/gap-system/homebrew-gap.
As in Linux, once the installation is completed, you can run GAP from any terminal by just typing gap.
Windows. Here, you can download an executable installation file that will guide you through the process, so there isn’t much to tell. Once the installation is over, you will probably get a direct access icon to run GAP on your desktop or pinned in the start.
In Windows 10 or later, you can also run GAP through the Windows Subsystem for Linux. This is highly recommended in case there is some package which has not built binaries for Windows, and can be run in Unix.