If the Ferret package was obtained as a part of the GAP distribution from the Download
section of the GAP website, you may proceed to Section 3.2. Alternatively, the Ferret package may be installed using a separate archive, for example, for an update or an installation in a non-default location (see Reference: GAP Root Directories).
Below we describe the installation procedure for the .tar.gz archive format. Installation using other archive formats is performed in a similar way.
It may be unpacked in one of the following locations:
in the pkg directory of your GAP 4 installation;
or in a directory named .gap/pkg in your home directory (to be added to the GAP root directory unless GAP is started with -r option);
or in a directory named pkg in another directory of your choice (e.g. in the directory mygap in your home directory).
In the latter case one one must start GAP with the -l option, e.g. if your private pkg directory is a subdirectory of mygap in your home directory you might type:
gap -l ";myhomedir/mygap"
where myhomedir is the path to your home directory, which (since GAP 4.3) may be replaced by a tilde (the empty path before the semicolon is filled in by the default path of the GAP 4 home directory).
After unpacking the archive, go to the newly created ferret directory and call ./configure to use the default ../.. path to the GAP home directory or ./configure path where path is the path to the GAP home directory, if the package is being installed in a non-default location. So for example if you install the package in the ~/.gap/pkg directory and the GAP home directory is ~/gap4r5 then you have to call
./configure ../../../gap4r5/
This will fetch the architecture type for which GAP has been compiled last and create a Makefile. Now simply call
make
to compile the binary and to install it in the appropriate place.
To use the Ferret Package you have to request it explicitly. This is done by calling LoadPackage (Reference: LoadPackage):
gap> LoadPackage("ferret"); true
If you want to load the Ferret package by default, you can put the LoadPackage command into your gaprc file (see Section Reference: The gap.ini and gaprc files).
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