[GAP Forum] GAP 4.8.6 release announcement

[Alexander Konovalov]

Dear GAP Forum,

This is to announce the release of GAP 4.8.6, which could be downloaded from

	http://www.gap-system.org/Releases/

The only two changes in the core GAP system made in this release are:

* the fix for the regression in the GAP kernel code introduced in GAP 4.8.5 
and breaking StringFile's ability to work with compressed files. [Reported 
by Bill Allombert]

* adding references about how to use the filter argument to the documentation 
of the Basic Groups library, and also adding an example using the IsPermGroup 
filter to the documentation of DihedralGroup. [Submitted by Sergio Siccha].

For the corresponding changes in the source code, see the GAP 4.8.6 milestone
on GitHub: 

	https://github.com/gap-system/gap/milestone/12?closed=1

Furthermore, GAP 4.8.6 distribution includes updates for 15 packages:

cvec                       | 2.5.6      | 08/11/2016
gpd                        | 1.45       | 02/11/2016
idrel                      | 2.34       | 20/10/2016 
json                       | 1.1.0      | 01/11/2016 
kan                        | 1.27       | 20/10/2016 
LieRing                    | 2.3        | 01/11/2016 
loops                      | 3.3.0      | 26/10/2016 
Polenta                    | 1.3.7      | 09/11/2016 
profiling                  | 1.1.0      | 01/11/2016 
QPA                        | 1.25       | 21/10/2016 
SLA                        | 1.2        | 01/11/2016 
TomLib                     | 1.2.6      | 07/11/2016 
Utils                      | 0.43       | 20/10/2016 
XGAP                       | 4.26       | 06/11/2016 
XMod                       | 2.58       | 02/11/2016 

We encourage all users to upgrade to GAP 4.8.6.

Just in case, a common pitfall during GAP installation on Linux and 
OS X is to compile only the GAP kernel, but not GAP packages. This 
procedure had changed recently (in GAP 4.8.4) so just in case let me 
remind you that after running 

./configure
make

in the GAP root directory you need to change to the 
'pkg' subdirectory and call

../bin/BuildPackages.sh

to run the script which will build most of the packages that require 
compilation (provided sufficiently many libraries, headers and tools 
are available).

If you need any help or would like to report any problems, please do 
not hesitate to contact us at support at gap-system.org, or submit new 
issues on GitHub: 

	https://github.com/gap-system/gap/issues

There is also a tag 'gap' for questions about GAP at the 
Mathematics Q&A site:
 
    http://math.stackexchange.com/tags/gap/info

In addition, you may find some GAP related news on Twitter:

    http://twitter.com/gap_system 

(you may also read the GAP Twitter feed at http://www.gap-system.org).


Wishing you fun and success using GAP,

Alexander Konovalov
on behalf of the GAP Group