Today in the Fedora Linux list, a person asked if there was a Fedora
project to build & distribute SAGE. He spoke with such enthusiasm
about SAGE that I became interested to see what it does and I'm
compiling it right now (I figure there's no point in trying to package
it for Fedora if I can't compile it). I didn't read your README all
the way through before the make started--then I did. Its been going
about 1 hour so far. Holy cow. The good news is that all of the
prerequisites seem to be available and were already installed in my
system. (Without a "configure" script to scan for prereqs and refuse
to build without them, I'm not entirely sure.)
If there is an effort to package SAGE for Fedora, please let me know.
I don't find one after some searching. If anybody has a spec file to
build an RPM for current SAGE, I'd appreciate seeing it. Or if you
have a Debian package configure file, I think I could convert. The
only lead I've found so far is that PCLinuxOS, which is an RPM based
distribution, offers version 2.0.2 of SAGE in rpm format. I've been
studying that spec file and it appears to me that some changes in the
build/install procedure have changed in SAGE itself, at lest if I'm
understanding the SAGE README.txt file. PCLinuxOS packaging is enough
different from Fedora that I'll wrestle with the details.
The build & install procedure for SAGE 3.0.1 is different from almost
all GNU software in Fedora, where you type "configure ..." "make" and
"make install DESTDIR=xxx" in a "build root" environment.
I'm curious about a few things in particular.
1. About the lack of "make install". Is it correct that after running
"make", then I can run
$ sage -bdist 3.0.1
and the result that gets deposited in "dist" is a complete, self
contained set of files that includes everything needed to run SAGE and
nothing else? (no source code, etc?). That resulting directory
"dist" can be relocated anywhere and SAGE will still run?
2. What does SAGE's build do if it can't find something it wants, such
as a python devel package or McCauley2? Don't you think a
"configure" script for SAGE would be a good idea? The build takes so
long, it seems like a waste that it doesn't check development
libraries at the start and report back on what it can/can't find. I
"thought" I had the prerequisites because I have everything mentioned
in the README. However, the PCLinuxOS setup has several development
libraries I don't think I have. Here's a list of some build
requirements that they list:
BuildRequires: python-scons
BuildRequires: libgfortran
BuildRequires: ntl-devel
BuildRequires: libgd-devel
BuildRequires: libopencdk-develsage-2.9.3-2gri65072007.src.rpm
BuildRequires: libgpg-error-devel
BuildRequires: libgcrypt-devel
BuildRequires: libgnutls-devel
BuildRequires: gnutls
BuildRequires: scons
BuildRequires: libsqlite3_0-devel
BuildRequires: mercurial
BuildRequires: libfac
BuildRequires: clisp
BuildRequires: python-gd
BuildRequires: IPython
BuildRequires: R-base
They have R in the list. That's cool, I like R! But I can't say for
sure
3. I do not understand the README comment 9, on installing GAP. Once
SAGE is installed from RPM, users won't have authority to do this for
themselves, so I better try to take care of it. I suppose you want
those things packaged as optional additional components for the SAGE
program? Or do you rather have them in the one-giant-rpm file? I
understand
$ ./sage -optional
I don't understand the instructions "then installing (with ./sage -i)
the package whose name
begins with database_gap. "
I suppose I mean to say, is there a way I can just download those
additional database files by http or ftp and then install them without
being interactive with SAGE.
And, I suppose most importantly, if I run "sage -bdist 3.0.1", will
those optional database files be included?
4. Another packaging problem is that the name "sage" is already
claimed in Fedora by an OpenGL library, and I expect they won't
approve a package called SAGE. I was wondering if you support /oppose
a name like "sagemath".
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