Installation and Preface

To install the package, just unpack it in your packages directory (usually ~/gap/pkg for local installation).

To use `polymaking`, you need a working installation of the program polymake http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/polymake/. The package has been tested on linux and Mac OS X (10.4, 10.5 and 10.6). But it should be as platform independent as &GAP; and polymake.

The interaction with polymake is restricted to writing files and carrying out simple operations looking like

polymake file KEYWORD1 KEYWORD2 KEYWORD3

on the command line. Scripts are not supported. Every call to polymake will re-start the program anew. This causes considerable overhead. The number of calls to polymake is reduced by caching the results in the so-called PolymakeObject in GAP. As of polymaking version 0.8.0, old versions of polymake (i.e. versions before 2.7.9) are not supported anymore.

A few words about the installation of polymake
polymaking
will try to guess the location of polymake. If this fails, a warning is issued at load time (InfoWarning level 1). Note that the guessing procedure is suppressed when is set manually (see ).
setenv PATH ${PATH}:<your polymakepath>
The general rule is: If `polymaking` finds polymake by itself, there is nothing to worry about.
Setting variables for external programs

As `polymaking` uses the program polymake, it needs to know where this program lives. The communication with polymake is done by writing files for polymake and reading its output (as returned to standard output "the prompt"). Note that the interface does not read any polymake file.

Sets the directory in which all polymake files are created to dir. The standard place for these files is a temporary directory generated when the package is loaded. This manipulates .
Sets the name for the polymake program to command. This manipulates .
Setting variables permanently
To permanently set the values of , and , add the lines
POLYMAKE_DATA_DIR:=Directory("/home/mypolymakedatadir"); POLYMAKE_COMMAND:=Filename(Directory("/home/mypolymakebindir/"),"polymake");

to your .gaprc file (see ). Note that these have to be before the LoadPackage("polymaking"); line. Or you can change the values of the above variables by editing lib/environment.gi