[GAP Forum] New update of GAP released

[John McDermott]

Dear Dima, Dear Forum,

On 9 Nov 2006, at 16:42, Dmitrii Pasechnik wrote:


> Hi there,
> may I ask why the file fix4r4p9 consists almost entirely of files  
> that are
> the same as in the release 4.4.8?
> E.g. in bin/ there are just the same gap95.exe and cygwin1.dll  
> files as in
> 4.4.8. Does this mean that the GAP executable doesn't have to be  
> rebuilt?
>

In fact the kernel was changed, so the executable gapw95.exe has  
changed (though
you are correct that the dll has not changed between these two  
versions).

GAP must be rebuilt - please follow the instructions on the page:

http://www.gap-system.org/Download/upgrade.html

(Windows users can just ignore the step starting with "On UNIX/Linux  
you must ...")


> IMHO this is entirely unnnecessary waste of bandwidth. (and for  
> folks on a
> slow connection to internet just plain painful)
>
> Ideally, one would only distribute patches. At least for people who  
> rebuild
> GAP and thus have all the development tools there anyway, patching the
> source is as easy as installing the update.
>

Many years ago, when the network was slower, we used to do exactly  
what you
are suggesting -- release incremental patches that updated from GAP  
x.y.z to
x.y.z+1. While this did, indeed, minimise download sizes, it caused a  
steady
stream of problems from users who didn't have a patch installed, or  
had a broken
version of patch, or mistyped the patch command line, or applied it  
from the
wrong directory or applied the two patches to get from from x.y.z to  
x.y.z+2
in the wrong order, or otherwise made small mistakes which corrupted  
their GAP
installations.

We have moved, progressively, to the current arrangement of releasing  
a fix
file which can be applied to ANY version of GAP 4.4, simply by  
unpacking it.
We find the extra bandwidth more than justified by the reduced support
effort.

For sophisticated users who wish to reduce bandwidth, Frank Luebeck
maintains a complete GAP installation for Linux (including compiled  
binaries
for relevant packages and so on) which you can access using rsync, which
will efficiently send you just the data you need to update your copy to
match his at any time. There is a link to this distribution at
http://www.gap-system.org/Download


> Thanks,
> Dima
>

Best wishes,
John.


--
John McDermott
Scientific Officer
School of Computer Science
University of St Andrews
North Haugh, St Andrews, Fife
KY16 9SX
SCOTLAND

(Room 0.17, Jack Cole Building)

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