Re: [sage-devel] Sage Pari
On 2011-07-25 21:57, Karim Belabas wrote: We badly need feedback at a higher level, from developpers or would-be developpers, regarding the features they think are lacking in Pari, and are preventing them from developping in Pari the way they would like to. I'm sorry to say this (I would certainly like it the other way) but it has happened at least twice to me that I wrote some code for PARI (not adding huge new features but some smaller things) and that the response from the developers was not really positive. So I personally do not feel very welcome. PARI days sounds like a very good idea. -- 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
[sage-devel] Sage Pari
I had an interesting conversation with Karim Belabas, lead developer of the Pari project (which Sage relies on for many things, including most number field functionality). I specifically asked him how he saw the Sage/Pari relationship. I have CC'ed him to this email, and hope that if there is anything I have forgotten (we were eating lunch and I did not take notes!) he will come forward. Here is a specific thing: he has noticed that the number of citations (or just mentions) to the use of Pari/GP in mathematical papers has been declining recently. References to Sage have been increasing. It is quite possible that there are people who used to use Pari/GP directly but now use Sage as an interface to it, possibly without realising that they are still using Pari/GP. It is not a new problem that Sage users can easily omit to credit the authors of components of Sage in their papers, and we should perhaps redouble our efforts to make it easier for this not to happen. Ironically, one reason why Pari is especially keen to get credit for itself right now is that after years of having essentially zero funding, at the moment Pari is enjoying the opposite situation, with money for people as well as machines; and this makes it particularly important for them to be able to point to how much their package is used. Sage developers will understand this! A second point Karim made is that he would like to see more more cases (currently: 0) in which a deficiency in a part of Pari used by Sage -- for example, some number field functionality -- was fixed by contributions to Pari itself, rather than by adding the extra functionality within the Sage library. [Example: I use the idealstar() function in Pari which gives the group structure and generators for Z_K/I where I is an ideal in the ring of integers Z_K of a number field K. But I needed more, namely the same for the quotient of this by units in Z_K. So I (with Maite Aranes) wrote such a function in Sage. It turns out that Pari has such a function internally, but exposed to users; and if I had asked it would have been possible to make it available.] There were other issues, but that's all I remember right now. John -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Sage Pari
On 2011-07-25 15:40, John Cremona wrote: A second point Karim made is that he would like to see more more cases (currently: 0) in which a deficiency in a part of Pari used by Sage -- for example, some number field functionality -- was fixed by contributions to Pari itself, rather than by adding the extra functionality within the Sage library. There are certainly a lot of PARI bugs which were discovered through Sage and then patched in PARI. Regarding PARI contributions: I simply think that Sage is much more developer-friendly than PARI. One, because programming in Sage is much easier than in PARI and second, because there is a Sage community but no PARI community. You cannot really blaim PARI for using C as a programming language (it is also because of historical reasons), but I think there can be some blaim for being such a closed community of essentially 2 developers. There isn't even a working PARI mailing list... which I think is really a pity. Cheers, Jeroen. -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Sage Pari
On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Jeroen Demeyer jdeme...@cage.ugent.be wrote: On 2011-07-25 15:40, John Cremona wrote: A second point Karim made is that he would like to see more more cases (currently: 0) in which a deficiency in a part of Pari used by Sage -- for example, some number field functionality -- was fixed by contributions to Pari itself, rather than by adding the extra functionality within the Sage library. There are certainly a lot of PARI bugs which were discovered through Sage and then patched in PARI. Regarding PARI contributions: I simply think that Sage is much more developer-friendly than PARI. One, because programming in Sage is much easier than in PARI and second, because there is a Sage community but no PARI community. You cannot really blaim PARI for using C as a programming language (it is also because of historical reasons), but I think there can be some blaim for being such a closed community of essentially 2 developers. There isn't even a working PARI mailing list... which I think is really a pity. Last week the pari mailing lists moved to a different server, with the hope that they will work better than before. Also, I am sure that the Pari developers would not regard themselves as forming a closed group! In fact I am sure that they would welcome more contributors; though for the reasons you state, it is not (and never has been) easy to contribute code. John Cheers, Jeroen. -- 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
