Dear Gap-Forum,

This is to announce bugfix number 8 for the GAP library. The priority
of this fix is high.

This fix provides:
1) A workaround for a kernel problem in auxiliary routines for the function
'AbelianInvariantsSubgroupFpGroupMtc'.
2) Corrections in the sun-...-cc target in the Makefile
3) A new target for Linux Power-Pc Machines in the Makefile
4) Correction for the creation of the path name of share packages if the
operating system does not use '/' as directory separator.
5) Corection for an error in the comparison routine for vector spaces

Errors 1 and 5 may give wrong results, Error 4 will inhibit the use of share
packages under DOS.

This workaround will disable the function
'AbelianInvariantsSubgroupFpGroupMtc' (as well as two of its subfunctions
which are not mentioned in the manual). Calling one of these functions
now will lead to an error message recommending to use the respective Rrs
version instead, e. g., in the case of 'AbelianInvariantsSubgroupFpGroupMtc',
the function 'AbelianInvariantsSubgroupFpGroupRrs'.

The reason for this workaround is that a proper fix of the bug will
involve a recompilation of the kernel which, in the current case, means an
inadequate amount of work. So we will postpone it to the next unavoidable
kernel fix. (If you want we can privately provide you the kernel fix,
please send a mail to 'gap-trouble@dcs.st-and.ac.uk'.)

Many thanks to Franck Harou for reporting error 1, to Adam Barclay for
providing fix 2 and to Michael Smith for the new target 3.

To apply the fix, load the zoo archive 'fix8.zoo' from the
bugfixes web page
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~gap/Info/bugfixes.html
Alternatively you can find this file in the 'bugfixes' directory of the
GAP ftp distribution.

Unpack the file in the home directory of your GAP distribution (the
directory containing the 'lib' and 'etc' directories) using 'unzoo -x
fix8.zoo' (On a PC or a Mac you will have to enter the argument line after
the call to 'unzoo'.) This will replace the erraneous file by fixed versions.
Make sure you have write permissions when applying the fix.

You do not need to recompile.

You can remove the file 'description8' afterwards.

Thomas Breuer, Volkmar Felsch, Alexander Hulpke, and Werner Nickel, 15-Oct-97

#############################################################################
##
## These commands should run without error if the fix has been applied.
##
w:= VectorSpace( [[1,1]*Z(2)], GF(4) );
v:= GF(2)^2;
if (v=w)<>(w=v) then
  Error("fail");
fi;