[GAP Forum] Multi-user Installation on Linux

[Bill Allombert]

On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 11:33:42AM +0000, Gordon Royle wrote:
> Thanks for your reply, and Bill’s addendum.
> 
> The only problem with that set up that I can foresee is that one of
> the users is a package developer and constantly wants to tinker with,
> update and then re-load the latest version of the package. 
> 
> Is there a mechanism that allows each individual to have local
> versions of the packages but a common core? 

Yes, you can use the -l option of gap (library path):

In the file gap.sh (/usr/local/bin/gap after installing)
the last line is
exec "$GAP_DIR/bin/$GAP_PRG" $GAP_MEM -l "$GAP_DIR" "$@"

So you can change it to

exec "$GAP_DIR/bin/$GAP_PRG" $GAP_MEM -l "$HOME/gap;$GAP_DIR" "$@"

so that the user can install packages in "$HOME/gap/pkg"

Or you can let the user put their own modified gap script in $HOME/bin/gap.

Cheers,
Bill.