Sage, small group library

edit

Hmm, this should *really* be better documented! One of the "sample questions" at the Sage SX proposal is even about this. Can you think of where a good place for that would be?

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "_sage_input_28.py", line 10, in <module> exec compile(u'open("___code___.py","w").write("# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-\\n" + _support_.preparse_worksheet_cell(base64.b64decode("c2FnZSAtaSBkYXRhYmFzZV9nYXA="),globals())+"\\n"); execfile(os.path.abspath("___code___.py")) File "", line 1, in <module> File "/private/var/folders/zp/z4nx0jkn1_s3lk7z0ythnx880000gn/T/tmpXoDlQm/___code___.py", line 2 sage -i database_gap ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax Above is the output I get when I type in 'sage -i database_gap'. Is there any way to fix this?

Ah! You have to do it from outside Sage, or perhaps from inside using the `install_package` command.

How do you do that? What is the syntax for the command?

http://www.sagemath.org/doc/reference/misc/sage/misc/package.html#sage.misc.package.install_package

they are "new style" packages, that is, they are two thing - a tar ball and an entry in SAGE_ROOT/build/, and you need to place the right tarball into SAGE_ROOT/upstream/ for this to work. It's a problem not specific to GAP-related optional packages.

So, how does one install the "new style" packages? This should really be doable in a one-liner that is does not involve manually downloading things...

you can check the file SAGE_ROOT/build/pkgs/gap_packages/package-version.txt to see the version you'd get installed. You can't just grab an .spkg file from the web and install it. If you want a newer spkg you'd need to update the contents of SAGE_ROOT/build/pkgs/gap_packages/, using git.

That is really annoying. One should just be able to do something analogous to the old `./sage -f spkg-name` to get an upgrade.

Well, the new style packages are safer to use, as you won't be able to install an incompatible spkg. What is really annoying is that not all packages are already converted to the new style.