On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 2:32 PM, Bill Hart <goodwillh...@googlemail.com> wrote: > Is there even a link from which Sympow can be downloaded so that one > can look through the code to see if it is worth salvaging. I can't > even find a webpage for Mark Watkins at the moment, let alone sympow. > > I honestly suspect that Mark has just moved on to other projects. I > doubt very much if his work on Magma precludes him from maintaining > this package. I've personally worked with him on projects since he > joined the Magma group and we both made use of each other's code > without even asking the question.
The above is just speculation without even asking him. > But, we should be more selective when including packages. No new packages ever again :-) > IMHO, from > the start, sympow should have been merged to become part of a larger > library of functionality, though to be honest, I'm not quite sure > where it exactly belongs. I don't think it belongs in flint as such. > Maybe Pari? And whose going to do this work? You? > I'm also really wondering why cephes is in Sage. Unless there are two > packages with the same name, it was last updated circa 1994 and uses > non-portable long doubles. We've booted packages from Sage for much > less felonious offences. Cephes is in Sage because it's absolutely critical for the Windows port. > Is there a modularity problem here? I always thought that given Sage > sees itself as more of a distribution (like linux) than a single > project, Sage is not more of a distribution than a single project. Sage is: 1. A distribution 2. Unified interfaces to math software 3. A new library and math software system, with the single guiding goal to "create a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and MATLAB." > then all but a very small number of core libs should be able > to be added/removed from Sage at the flick of a switch. This is not even true of Linux distributions. Even the most minimal ubuntu install still has tons of packages... or at least a lot more then "a very small number". > It sure would've made a Windows port easier! Programs that aren't Sage are easier to port to Windows :-). You might try porting SPD to Windows instead, which would be easier. http://github.com/certik/spd > Is it too late to fix the spkg > system to be more modular. Is there even an efficient method in Python > of conditionally including code based on availability of prereqs? I > know this exists at some levels, for example GMP vs MPIR or NTL vs > FLINT or zn_poly vs FLINT vs Pari for Z/nZ[x], etc. But this only > seems to be where one library can substitute for another, which is > rare. Could this be extended and still efficient? For example I don't > think you want to be checking in Python whether you have GMP loaded > every time you go to add two integers together. But then maybe with > the possibility of a choice between MPIR and GMP at the spkg level, > GMP/MPIR should be viewed as essential to Sage and thus a core lib? > Maybe ALL the libraries in Sage are considered core and only those > packages which are optional spkgs are considered truly.... optional. Correct. > If so, I think the core is potentially unwieldy and It's not unwieldy, but it is difficult to wield. > may be > contributing to some of the maintenance issues..... Sage is definitely contributing to the maintenance issues of Sage. > Bill. > > On 16 Aug, 13:55, John Cremona <john.crem...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On 16 August 2010 13:38, Dr. David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: >> >> > On 08/16/10 11:51 AM, John Cremona wrote: >> >> >> The spkg sympow (Mark Watkins's C library for computing symmetric >> >> power L-functions, which applications) is causing more and more >> >> problems (see #9705 for example) >> >> > John, >> >> > I think you mean #9703 - #9705 looks unrelated to SYMPOW to me. >> >> Correct. (Eyesight not what it was...) >> >> John >> >> >> >> >> >> > #9166 (Cygwin related) is another relevant ticket, though there's >> > probably >> > more information on #9703. >> >> > Dave >> >> > -- >> > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com >> > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to >> > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com >> > For more options, visit this group at >> >http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel >> > URL:http://www.sagemath.org > > -- > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > URL: http://www.sagemath.org > -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org