[GAP Forum] Multi-user Installation on Linux

[Alexander Konovalov]

Dear all,

An alternative which does not require to call GAP with an option is to
use the `.gap` directory. If you will have a package `pkgname` in the
directory  

~/.gap/pkg/pkgname 

then GAP will load the version of the package from there. If you will
start GAP with -r command line option, it will ignore the content of
.gap directory (which may also have other files, e.g. gap.ini and gaprc).

Please see ?GAPInfo.UserGapRoot for further details.

Best wishes
Alexander

> On 17 Oct 2017, at 12:45, John Bamberg <john.bamberg at uwa.edu.au> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Gordon was referring to me, but I already know about the
> 
> gap -l “path”
> 
> option, so this solves Gordon’s question.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> John.
> 
> 
>> On 17 Oct 2017, at 7:33 PM, Gordon Royle <gordon.royle at uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>> 
>> Thanks for your reply, and Bill’s addendum.
>> 
>> The only problem with that set up that I can foresee is that one of the users is a package developer and constantly wants to tinker with, update and then re-load the latest version of the package. 
>> 
>> Is there a mechanism that allows each individual to have local versions of the packages but a common core? 
>> 
>> Or do we just go for most users having the common version and those with additional needs running a completely separate installation?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 17 Oct 2017, at 4:02 pm, Christopher Jefferson <caj21 at st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Here is what I do:
>>> 
>>> 1) Untar the gap installation to a directory like /usr/local/lib/gap4r8
>>> 
>>> 2) Build GAP and all packages in this directory (GAP and it’s packages does not like being moved), exactly as normal.
>>> 
>>> 3) Either symlink, or copy, bin/gap.sh into a directory in the user’s path like /usr/local/bin
>>> 
>>> GAP should then run happily for any user who runs it.
>>> 
>>> The only problems arise if you want to try to separate different parts of GAP into different directories, which it currently doesn’t support well.
>>> 
>>> Chris
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Oct 17, 2017, at 1:21 AM, Gordon Royle <Gordon.Royle at uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hi
>>>> 
>>>> I want to install the latest GAP on a Linux (RHEL) machine in such a way that it is accessible to multiple users. (I have root permissions on that machine.)
>>>> 
>>>> I cannot seem to find instructions for this particular variant of the installation process - the kinds of things I need to know are
>>>> 
>>>> - do I create a GAP directory in the shared areas (i.e. /usr/local/lib/gap4r8 or similar)
>>>> - do I install all the packages in this shared area, or does each user maintain their own package
>>>> - would it be easier to just ask all users to install GAP for themselves (well, this would obviously be easier for me!)
>>>> 
>>>> (The link on the main installation page that claims to be installation documentation actually downloads a file called INSTALL.dms which I cannot open )
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks
>>>> 
>>>> Gordon
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Forum mailing list
>>>> Forum at mail.gap-system.org
>>>> http://mail.gap-system.org/mailman/listinfo/forum
>>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Forum mailing list
>> Forum at mail.gap-system.org
>> http://mail.gap-system.org/mailman/listinfo/forum
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Forum mailing list
> Forum at mail.gap-system.org
> http://mail.gap-system.org/mailman/listinfo/forum

--
Dr. Alexander Konovalov, Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Computational Algebra (CIRCA)
School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews
Software Sustainability Institute Fellow
https://alexk.host.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk
--
The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland:No.SC013532