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GAP 4.10 release notes

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Alexander Konovalov edited this page Jun 15, 2019 · 79 revisions

This is a page to collect most important changes planned to appear in GAP 4.10 release series.

To check if there are new pull requests that have to be added to these release notes, use the following queries:

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GAP 4.10.2

Improvements in the experimental way to allow 3rd party code to link GAP as a library:

  • #3438 Add GAP_AssignGlobalVariable and GAP_IsNameOfWritableGlobalVariable to the libGAP API.

Fixes in the experimental support for using the Julia garbage collector:

  • #3412 Fix of a problem where the Julia GC during a partial sweep frees some, but not all objects of an unreachable data structure, and also may erroneously try to mark the deallocated objects.
  • #3432 Fix stack scanning for the Julia GC when GAP is used as a library.

Fixed bugs that could lead to crashes

  • #3463 Fix a bug in TransformationListList which could cause a crash.

Fixed bugs that could lead to incorrect results

  • #3321 Fix a bug in ClassPositionsOfLowerCentralSeries. [Reported by Frieder Ladisch]
  • #3478 Fix of a dangerous bug in the comparison of large negative integers, introduced in GAP 4.10.1. If x and y were equal, but not identical, large negative numbers then x < y returned true instead of false.

Fixed bugs that could lead to break loops

  • #3281 Fix declaration of sparse action homomorphisms.
  • #3485 Fix a "method not found" error in SubdirectProduct.

Other fixed bugs

  • #3154 If the group has been obtained as subgroup from a Fitting free/solvable radical computation, the data is inherited and might not guarantee that the factor group really is Fitting free. Added a check and an assertion to catch this situation.
  • #3311 Fix corner case in modified Todd-Coxeter algorithm when relator is trivial.

Packages

GAP 4.10.2 distribution includes 145 packages. A new package MonoidalCategories by Mohamed Barakat, Sebastian Gutsche, Sebastian Posur have been added to the distribution. It is based on the CAP package and implements monoidal structures for CAP.

GAP 4.10.1

Fixes in the experimental way to allow 3rd party code to link GAP as a library:

  • #2840 Do not start a session when loading workspace if --nointeract command line option is used.
  • #3096 Add prototype for GAP_Enter and GAP_Leave macros.
  • #3102 Prevent infinite recursions in echoandcheck and SyWriteandcheck.
  • #3111 Remove environ arguments and sysenviron.

Fixes in the experimental support for using the Julia garbage collector:

  • #2969 Fix task scanning for Julia GC.
  • #3199 Fix stack marking for the Julia GC.
  • #3243 Specify the Julia binary instead of the Julia prefix.
  • #3248 Export Julia CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, and LIBS to sysinfo.gap.

Improved and extended functionality

  • #3042 Always generate sysinfo.gap (previously, it was only generated if the "compatibility mode" of the build system was enabled).
  • #3043 Add support for writing to ERROR_OUTPUT from kernel code.
  • #3285 Add make check.

Changed documentation

  • #3079 Fix documentation of NumberFFVector and add an example.

Fixed bugs that could lead to crashes

  • #2991 Fix readline crash when using autocomplete with colored-completion-prefix turned on in Bash.
  • #3216 Fix overlapping memcpy in APPEND_LIST.

Fixed bugs that could lead to incorrect results

  • #3220 Fix bugs in the code for partial permutations.
  • #3227 Fix a bug in Gcd for polynomials not returning standard associates, introduced in GAP 4.10.0.

Fixed bugs that could lead to break loops

  • #3095 Change GroupWithGenerators to accept collections again (to avoid regressions in code that relied on this undocumented behavior).
  • #3128 Fix ShallowCopy for for a Knuth-Bendix rewriting system. [Reported by Ignat Soroko]
  • #3149 Fix IsMonomialMatrix to work with compressed matrices. [Reported by Dominik Bernhardt]

Removed or obsolete functionality

  • #3005 Disable make install (previously it displayed a warning which often got ignored).

Other fixed bugs

  • #3013 Fix some errors which stopped triggering a break loop.
  • #3026 Fix compiler error with GCC 4.4.7.
  • #3071 Fix string copying logic.

Packages

GAP 4.10.1 distribution includes 144 packages. Five new packages have been added to the distribution:

  • MajoranaAlgebras by Markus Pfeiffer and Madeleine Whybrow, which constructs Majorana representations of finite groups.
  • PackageManager by Michael Torpey, providing a collection of functions for installing and removing GAP packages, with the eventual aim of becoming a full pip-style package manager for the GAP system.
  • Thelma by Victor Bovdi and Vasyl Laver, implementing algorithms to deal with threshold elements.
  • walrus by Markus Pfeiffer, providing methods for proving hyperbolicity of finitely presented groups in polynomial time.
  • YangBaxter by Leandro Vendramin and Alexander Konovalov, which provides functionality to construct classical and skew braces, and also includes a database of classical and skew braces of small orders.

GAP 4.10.0

New features and major changes

libGAP (WIP)

We now provide a semi-official way to allow 3rd party code to link GAP as a library; this is based on the libGAP code by SageMath, but different. We hope that a future version of SageMath can drop its custom modifications for GAP and use this interface instead. If you are interested in this kind of interface, please get in touch with us to help us improve it. See also this email.

Relevant pull requests:

  • #1690 Add a callback to FuncJUMP_TO_CATCH
  • #2528 Add IsLIBGAP constant
  • #2702 Add GAP kernel API
  • #2723 Introduce command line options --norepl and --nointeract

Reduce impact of immediate methods

GAP allows declaring so-called "immediate methods". The idea is that these are very simple and fast methods which are immediately called if information about an object becomes known, in order to perform some quick deduction. For example, if the size of a group is set, there might be immediate methods which update the filters IsFinite and IsTrivial of the group suitably.

While this can be very elegant and useful in interactive GAP sessions, the overhead for running these immediate methods and applying their results can become a major factor in the runtime of complex computations that create thousands or millions of objects.

To address this, various steps were taken:

  • some immediate methods were turned into regular methods
  • a special handler for SetSize was created that performs deductions which previously were taken care of by immediate methods
  • some immediate methods were replaced by implications (set via InstallTrueMethod), a mechanism that essentially adds zero overhead, unlike immediate methods
  • various group constructors were modified to precompute and preset properties of freshly created group objects, to avoid triggering immediate methods for these

As a result of these and other changes, consider the following example; with GAP 4.9, it takes about 130 seconds on one test system, while with GAP 4.10 it runs in about 22 seconds, i.e., more than six times faster.

G:=PcGroupCode( 741231213963541373679312045151639276850536621925972119311,11664);;
IsomorphismGroups(G,PcGroupCode(CodePcGroup(G),Size(G)))<>fail;

Relevant pull requests and issues: #2386, #2387, #2522.

Experimental support for using the Julia garbage collector

It is now possible to use the garbage collector of the Julia language instead of GAP's traditional GASMAN garbage collector. This is partly motivated by a desire to allow tight integration with GAP and Julia in the future. Warning: right now, this is slower, and also requires a patched version of Julia.

Relevant pull requests: #2092, #2408, #2461, #2485, #2495, #2672, #2688, #2793, #2904, #2905, #2931.

Change definition of IsPGroup to not require finiteness

In the past, the GAP manual entry for IsPGroup defined p-groups as being finite groups, which differs from the most commonly used definition for p-groups. Note however that there was no actual implication installed from IsPGroup to IsFinite, so it always was possible to actually create infinite groups in the filter IsPGroup.

In GAP 4.10, we adjusted (in #1545) the documentation for IsPGroup to the commonly accepted definition for p-groups. In addition, code in the GAP library and in packages using IsPGroup was audited and (in a very few cases) adjusted to explicitly check IsFinite (see e.g. #2866).

Improved and extended functionality:

  • #2041 Teach FrattiniSubgroup methods to check for solvability
  • #2053 Faster computation of modular inverses of integers
  • #2057 Various changes, including:
    • Improve computation of automorphism groups for fp groups (we still recommend to instead first convert the group to a computationally nice representation, such as a perm or pc group)
    • Add MinimalFaithfulPermutationDegree attribute for finite groups
    • Improve performance of GQuotients(F,G) when F is an Fp group
    • Some other performance and documentation tweaks
  • #2061, #2086, #2159, #2306 Speed up GcdInt, LcmInt, PValuation, RootInt, SmallestRootInt, IsPrimePowerInt
  • #2063 Teach GAP that BPSW pseudo primes < 2^64 are all known to be prime (the previous limit was 10^13)
  • #2091 Refactor DeclareAttribute and NewAttribute (arguments are now verified stricter)
  • #2115, #2204, #2272 Allow (optionally) passing a random source to many more Random methods than before, and also to RandomList
  • #2136 Add shortname entry to record returned by IsomorphismTypeInfoFiniteSimpleGroup
  • #2181 Implement Union(X,Y), where X and Y are in PositiveIntegers, NonnegativeIntegers, Integers, GaussianIntegers, Rationals, GaussianRationals, Cyclotomics, at least where a suitable output object exists (we already provided Intersection(X,Y) for a long time)
  • #2185 Implement IsCentral(M,x), where M is a magma, monoid, group, ring, algebra, ... and x an element of M (the documentation already claimed that these exist for a long time)
  • #2199 Optimize true/false conditions when coding if-statements
  • #2200 Add StringFormatted, PrintFormatted, PrintToFormatted
  • #2222 Turn hidden implications into actual implications
  • #2223 Add global function PositionsBound which returns the set of all bound positions in a given list
  • #2224, #2243, #2340 Improve ShowImpliedFilters output
  • #2225 Improve LocationFunc for kernel function
  • #2232 Make ValueGlobal faster
  • #2242 Add global function CyclesFromList
  • #2244 Make rank argument to InstallImmediateMethod optional, similar to InstallMethod
  • #2274 Ensure uniform printing of machine floats nan, inf, -inf across different operating systems
  • #2287 Turn IsInfiniteAbelianizationGroup into a property and add some implications involving it #2287
  • #2293, #2602, #2718 Improved and documented various kernel and memory debugging facilities (requires recompiling GAP with --enable-debug, --enable-valgrind resp. --enable-memory-checking)
  • #2308 Method selection code was rewritten from GAP to C
  • #2326 Change SimpleGroup to perform better input validation and improve or correct error message for type 2E
  • #2375 Make last2 and last3 available in break loops
  • #2383 Speed improvements for automorphism groups
  • #2393 Track location of InstallMethod and InstallImmediateMethod
  • #2422 Improve tracking of InstallMethod and DeclareOperation
  • #2426 Speed up InverseMatMod with integer modulus
  • #2427 Fix and complete support for custom functions (i.e., objects which can be called like a function using obj(arg) syntax)
  • #2456 Add PrintString and ViewString methods for character tables
  • #2474 Change IsConstantRationalFunction and IsUnivariateRationalFunction to return false if input isn't a rational function (instead of an error)
  • #2474 Add methods for multiplying rational functions over arbitrary rings by rationals
  • #2496 Finite groups whose order is known and not divisible by 4 are immediately marked as solvable
  • #2509 Rewrite support for .gz compressed files to use zlib, now works on Windows
  • #2519, #2524, #2531 Test now rejects empty inputs and warns if the input contains no test
  • #2574 When reporting syntax errors, GAP now "underlines" the complete last token, not just the position where it stopped parsing
  • #2577, #2613 Add quadratic and bilinear add forms for Omega(e,d,q)
  • #2598 Add BannerFunction to PackageInfo.g
  • #2606 Improve PageSource to work on functions that were read from a file given by a relative path
  • #2616 Speed up computation of quotients of associative words by using existing (but previously unused) kernel functions for that
  • #2640 Work on MatrixObj and VectorObj
  • #2654 Make Sortex stable
  • #2666, #2686 Add IsBiCoset attribute for right cosets, which is true if the right coset is also a left coset
  • #2684 Add NormalSubgroups methods for symmetric and alternating permutation groups
  • #2726 Validate PackageInfo.g when loading packages
  • #2733 Minor performance improvements, code cleanup and very local fixes
  • #2750 Reject some invalid uses of ~
  • #2812 Reduce memory usage and improve performance of the MTC (modified Todd-Coxeter) code that was rewritten in GAP 4.9, but which was much slower than the old (but buggy) code it replaced; the difference is now small, but the old code still is faster in some case.
  • #2855, #2877 Add IsPackageLoaded
  • #2878 Speed up conjugacy tests for permutation by using random permutation of points when selecting base in centralizer
  • #2899 TestDirectory reports number of failures and failed files

Changed documentation

  • #2192 Add an example for PRump
  • #2219 Add examples to the relations chapter
  • #2360 Document DecomPoly and NormalizerViaRadical
  • #2366 Don't recommend avoiding X
  • #2432 Correct a claim about the index of Omega(e,p,q) in SO(e,p,q)
  • #2549 Update documentation of the -T command line option
  • #2551 Add new command line option --alwaystrace which ensures error backtraces are printed even if break loops are disabled
  • #2681 Documented ClassPositionsOfSolvableRadical and CharacterTableOfNormalSubgroup
  • #2834 Improve manual section about Info classes

Fixed bugs that could lead to crashes:

  • #2154, #2242, #2294, #2344, #2353, #2736 Fix several potential (albeit rare) crashes related to garbage collection
  • #2196 Fix crash in HashKeyBag on SPARC Solaris 11
  • #2305 Fix crash in PartialPerm([1,2,8],[3,4,1,2]);
  • #2477 Fix crash if ~ is used to modify list
  • #2499 Fix crash in the kernel functions {8,16,32}Bits_ExponentSums3
  • #2601 Fix crash in MakeImmutable(rec(x:=~));
  • #2665 Fix crash when empty filename is passed
  • #2711 Fix crash when tracing buggy attribute/property methods that fail to return a value
  • #2766 Fix obscure crashes by using a!{l} syntax inside a function (this syntax never was fully implemented and was unusable, and now has been removed)

Fixed bugs that could lead to incorrect results:

  • #2085 Fix bugs in JenningsLieAlgebra and PCentralLieAlgebra that could e.g. lead to incorrect LieLowerCentralSeries results
  • #2113 Fix IsMonomial for reducible characters and some related improvements
  • #2183 Fix bug in ValueMolienSeries that could lead to ValueMolienSeries(m,0) not being 1
  • #2198 Make multiplication of larger integers by tiny floats commutative (e.g. now 10.^-300 * 10^400 and 10^400 * 10.^-300 both give infinity, while before 10^400 * 10.^-300 gave 1.e+100); also ensure various strange inputs, like rec() ^ 1;, produce an error (instead of setting a^1 = a and 1*a = a for almost any kind of object)
  • #2273 Fix TypeOfOperation for setters of and-filters
  • #2275, #2280 Fix IsFinitelyGeneratedGroup and IsFinitelyGeneratedMonoid to not (incorrectly) assume that a given infinite generating set implies that there is no finite generating set
  • #2311 Don't set IsFinitelyGeneratedGroup for finitely generated magmas which are not groups
  • #2452 Fix bug that allowed creating empty magmas in the filters IsTrivial and IsMagmaWithInverses
  • #2689 Fix LogFFE to not return negative results on 32 bit systems
  • #2766 Fix a bug that allowed creating corrupt permutations

Fixed bugs that could lead to break loops:

  • #2040 Raise error if eager float literal conversion fails (fixes #1105)
  • #2582 Fix ExtendedVectors for trivial vector spaces
  • #2617 Fix HighestWeightModule for Lie algebras in certain cases
  • #2829 Fix ShallowCopy for IteratorOfCartesianProduct

Other fixed bugs:

  • #2220 Don't set IsSubsetLocallyFiniteGroup filter for finite fields
  • #2268 Handle spaces in filenames of gziped filenames
  • #2269, #2660 Fix some issues with the interface between GAP and xgap (or other similar frontends for GAP)
  • #2315 Prevent creation of groups of floats, just like we prevent creation of groups of cyclotomics
  • #2350 Fix prompt after line continuation
  • #2365 Fix tracing of mutable variants of One/Zero/Inv/AInv
  • #2398 Fix PositionStream to report correct position
  • #2467 Fix support for identifiers of length 1023; and more
  • #2470 Don't display garbage after certain syntax error messages
  • #2533 Fix composing a map with an identity map to not produce a range that is too big
  • #2638 Fix result of Random on 64 bit big endian system to match those on little endian, and on 32 bit big endian
  • #2672 Fix MakeImmutable for weak pointer objects, which previously failed to make subobjects immutable
  • #2674 Fix SaveWorkspace to return false in case of an error, and true only if successful
  • #2681 Fix Display for the character table of a trivial group
  • #2716 When seeding a MersenneTwister from a string, the last few characters would not be used if the string length was not a multiple of 4. Fixing this may lead to different series of random numbers being generated.
  • #2720 Reject workspaces made in a GAP with readline support in a GAP without, and vice versa, instead of crashing
  • #2657 The subobjects of the mutable values of the attributes ComputedClassFusions, ComputedIndicators, ComputedPowerMaps, ComputedPrimeBlockss are now immutable. This makes sure that the values are not accidentally changed. This change may have side-effects in users' code, for example the object returned by 0 * ComputedPowerMaps( CharacterTable( "A5" ) )[2] had been a mutable list before the change, and is an immutable list from now on.

Removed or obsolete functionality

  • Remove multiple undocumented internal functions. Nobody should have been using them, but if you were, you may extract it from a previous GAP release that still contained it. (#2670, #2781 and more)
  • #2335 Remove several functions and variables that were deprecated for a long time: DiagonalizeIntMatNormDriven, DeclarePackageDocumentation, KERNEL_VERSION, GAP_ROOT_PATHS, LOADED_PACKAGES, PACKAGES_VERSIONS, IsTuple, StateRandom, RestoreStateRandom, StatusRandom, FactorCosetOperation, ShrinkCoeffs, ExcludeFromAutoload, CharacterTableDisplayPrintLegendDefault, ConnectGroupAndCharacterTable, IsSemilatticeAsSemigroup, CreateCompletionFiles, PositionFirstComponent, ViewLength
  • #2502 Various kernel functions now validate their inputs more carefully (making it harder to produce bad effects by accidentally passing bad data to them)
  • #2700 Forbid constructors with 0 arguments (they were never meaningful)

Packages

  • The recogbase package has been merged into the recog package, and therefore is no longer distributed with GAP.
  • The linboxing package has been unusable (it does not compile) for several years now, and is unmaintained. It was therefore dropped from the GAP package distribution. If anybody is willing to take over and fix the package, the latest sources are available at https://github.com/gap-packages/linboxing.
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