The GAP package distribution is managed via this repository: this repository contains the metadata of all the GAP packages in the distribution. We also upload snapshots the package distribution tarballs to appropriate release tags on this repository.
| Test | GAP master |
GAP 4.11.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Released packages |  |
 |
For each package in the GAP package distribution, there is a subdirectory of
the packages directory whose name equals that of the package with all
letters turned to lower case. In that directory is a file called meta.json
which contains the metadata for that package as JSON.
For example, the metadata of ACE package is contained in packages/ace/meta.json.
The content of the meta.json file for package is obtained by reading its
PackageInfo.g file in a GAP script, then turning this into JSON data where
possible (basically integers, strings, lists and records are converted to
their natural JSON counterparts; but e.g. functions are obviously not
convertible this way and thus are simply ignored). This is basically the same
form as used by the GAP release scripts to encode which packages are bundled
with a GAP release, except that there it is one big file, while here we have
one file per packages.
In addition to this, we also store the SHA256 checksum of the PackageInfo.g
file resp. of the first package archive under the keys PackageInfoSHA256 resp.
ArchiveSHA256. Here, with "the first package archive", we mean that we
take the archive with first format extension specified by the ArchiveFormats field of
the package info record.
For example, the SHA256 in this excerpt of a meta.json file refers to the
.tar.gz file
"ArchiveFormats": ".tar.gz .zip",
"ArchiveSHA256": "15c516d89863916ef8f4b0d5c68f5b79cb41b75741fc3b604a6a868569dcda38",
"ArchiveURL": "https://github.com/homalg-project/ToricVarieties_project/releases/download/2022-03-04/ToricVarieties",
All of this is driven by several GitHub Workflows which automate most of the
maintenance on the GAP package distribution. For details on how they operate,
have a look at the .yml files in .github/workflows.
These workflows are in parts implemented by calling scripts in the tools directory.
The scripts in the tools directory are written in Python 3 or GAP. For the Python
scripts, you must make sure their prerequisites are installed, e.g. by invoking the
following command once from the root of this repository:
python -m pip install -r tools/requirements.txt
For information about what each script does, please consult its source, which should have comments explaining what it does and how to invoke it.
The various scripts use a bunch of auxiliary directories to store and exchange data:
_archivesis used to store copies of all package archives_pkginfosstores copies of thePackageInfo.g_releases_unpacked_archives