[GAP Forum] GAP package: braid

[Max Horn]

Dear Jerome,

for some reason I only received your email yesterday -- presumably it was stuck in mailing list moderation? Anyway, better a late answer than non at all :-).

> On 07 Dec 2016, at 16:57, Jerome BENOIT <z060822400814a at rezozer.net> wrote:
> 
> Hello Forum,
> 
> I have just noticed that Sage[Math] tries to pre-loads the GAP package `braid',
> which is not present in the GAP webpage. I guess it is an old GAP package.
> Can anybody confirm this ? Does anybody knows whether or not this GAP pachage
> has been replaced/supersedeed ?

To the best of my knowledge, GAP never bundled a "braid" package. There is an undeposited "package" with that name, see <https://www.gap-system.org/Packages/undep.html>, but (a) that never was shipped together with GAP, and (b) as far as I can tell, it is just a bunch of GAP source files, not an actual GAP package (i.e. no PackageInfo.g, init.g, read.g etc.).  Well, that said, there is also a broken link which purports to contain a "proper" package, but it points to a location on www.opensourcemath.org, and that domain expired and was taken over by a domain grabber placing ads on it.

Anyway, if you want to find out why Sage tries to load that package, perhaps ask them? And/or query their version control system to see when (and by whom) the code to load the package was added.

Cheers,
Max