Hi Francois, On 16 Aug, 23:43, François Bissey <f.r.bis...@massey.ac.nz> 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 asked that question on the 17th of February on this very same mailing list. > No one could find a homepage for sympow at the time. There is a blurb about > Mark on the University of Sydney's web page. > > sympow is a runtime dependency of "sage", that is you don't need it to build > sage itself. You only need it if you want the functionality.
Thanks for that explanation! > > Basically if it doesn't link to the sage extension library it almost always > can be installed later. Off those that can be installed afterwards a select > few > will result in sage missing essential functionality or not working altogether > (maxima comes to mind). We have a precise (we hope) list of these in sage-on- > gentoo. Where do I find "sage-on-gentoo"? And where would I find this list? > > If you weren't using sympow you won't be missing it and nothing would break. > Nothing apart from lfunctions/sympow.py calls sympow and I don't think > anything in that python file is called from anywhere else - it just provides > the interface to talk to sympow. In short sympow could be made optional > overnight by dropping it from the deps file. > > Francois OK, I was understanding it was used by modular forms and elliptic curves stuff for computing modular degrees or something, and so imagined it hopelessly intertwined with those. Also, I think this issue was brought up elsewhere and William said categorically he needed it and didn't want it removed from Sage. But I might've gotten that mixed up. I read so many threads they all become a blur after a while. I suppose if *someone* needs it, then it still has to be maintained. I don't personally need it, or I would offer to maintain it. But the day may soon come... Bill. -- 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
