========================================================= README file for the `IO' GAP4 package (Max Neunhoeffer) ========================================================= To get the newest version of this GAP 4 package download one of the archive files io-x.x.tar.gz io-x.x.zoo io-x.x.tar.bz2 io-x.x.zip and unpack it using gunzip io-x.x.tar.gz; tar xvf io-x.x.tar respectively unzoo -x io-x.x.zoo and so on. Do this in a directory called 'pkg', preferably (but not necessarily) in the 'pkg' subdirectory of your GAP 4 installation. It creates a subdirectory called 'io'. To install this package do cd io ./configure [path] where 'path' is a path to the main GAP root directory (if not given the default '../..' is assumed). Afterwards call 'make' to compile a binary file. If you installed GAP on several architectures, you must execute this configure/make step on each of the architectures immediately after configuring GAP itself on this architecture. The package will not work without this step. If you installed the package in another 'pkg' directory than the standard 'pkg' directory in your GAP 4 installation, then you have to add the path to the directory containing your 'pkg' directory to GAP's list of directories. This can be done by starting GAP with the '-l' command line option followed by the name of the directory and a semicolon. Then your directory is prepended to the list of directories searched. Otherwise the package is not found by GAP. Of course, you can add this option to your GAP startup script. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- STATIC LINKING: This might be interesting for M$ Windows users, as dynamic loading of binary modules does not work there. You can also create a new statically linked 'gap' binary as follows: Go into the main GAP directory and then into 'bin/BINDIR'. Here BINDIR means the directory containing the 'gap' executable after compiling 'gap'. This directory also contains the GAP compiler script 'gac'. Assuming IO in the standard location you can then say ./gac -o gap-static -p "-DIOSTATIC" -P "-static" ../../pkg/io/src/io.c Then copy your `gap' start script to, say, `gapbig' and change the references to the GAP binary to `gap-static'. If you want to install more than one package with a C-part like this package, you can still create a statically linked GAP executable by combining all the compile and link options and all the .c files as in the ./gac command above. For the IO package, you have to add -DIOSTATIC to the string of the -p option and the file ../../pkg/io/src/io.c somewhere on the command line. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recompiling the documentation is possible by the command `gap makedoc.g' in the IO directory. But this should not be necessary. E-mail me if there are any questions, remarks, suggestions. Also, I would like to hear about applications of this package. Max Neunhoeffer, e-mail: max.neunhoeffer@math.rwth-aachen.de