SingularInterface -- a GAP package for interfacing with Singular
================================================================

SingularInterface interfaces to the Singular interface on the kernel
level. The old name of this package was libsing.

This differentiates it from e.g. the GAP package "singular", which
instead starts a regular Singular binary as a subprocess, and
communicates with that by sending text commands (just as a user
would), and then parsing the text replies Singular issues.

Directly interfacing with the Singular C kernel is more complicated,
but has the advantage of avoiding parsing issues due to changed output
formatting, and also in general tends to be much, much faster.


Obtaining SingularInterface
===========================

You can obtain the latest version of SingularInterface from

  https://github.com/gap-packages/SingularInterface


Compiling SingularInterface
===========================

Please follow the steps in the file INSTALL.


Requirements
============

Currently SingularInterface should work on any UNIX-like platform,
including Linux and Mac OS X.

Right now, there is no support for Windows, mainly because none of the
SingularInterface developers uses Windows, but also because running
GAP and Singular on Windows is a bit tricky. If you are interested in
Windows support, please contact us.

Using SingularInterface requires a recent version of GAP (we recommend
4.7.2 or later), and Singular 4.0.1 or later. For technical reasons
(specifically, to allow coexistence of their respective memory
management systems), both should be built as 64 bit versions.

In addition, you need the following tools to build SingularInterface:

* GNU autoconf
* GNU automake
* GNU libtool
* git

Most Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, ...) already
provide suitable packages for all of these. On Mac OS X, the most
convenient way to install them is also via a package manager like
Fink, MacPorts or Homebrew. Alternatively, you can install any of the
above manually.
   

Using SingularInterface
=======================

Please consult the SingularInterface manual for instructions on how to
use SingularInterface once you compiled it successfully.


Contact
=======

You can contact the SingularInterface team by sending an email to

  gapsing AT mathematik DOT uni-kl DOT de

Bug reports or code contributions can be submitted via the issues
tracker respectively via pull requests at

  https://github.com/gap-packages/SingularInterface