GAP for Android

GAP is a system for computational discrete algebra.

I compiled a part of GAP 4.5.5 for android. In fact, the binaries are compiled for ARMv7 and statically linked, so they should work on any Linux based system using Cortex-A8 core or later.

If there is enough (more than 1GB) space on the /data partition, then no root access is required. An application has write access to a subdirectory under /data/data, so GAP can be installed (if using Android Terminal Emulator, for example) under /data/data/jackpal.androidterm. It is also possible to install to sdcard and have only the binaries and some directories and symlinks in the /data partition.

Otherwise, installing requires root, since the storage partition (/mnt/sdcard) is by default mounted with noexec options, and it needs to be remounted with exec option (

mount -o remount,exec /mnt/sdcard
). After remounting, the program can be executed by a non-root user (that has read access to /mnt/sdcard).

To install, untar the tar.gz file somewhere. If you do not untar under /mnt/sdcard, edit the included gap4r5/gap.sh accordingly.

The HOME environment variable should be set to a directory where .gap with the configuration files should be.

To run, execute the file /mnt/sdcard/gap4r5/gap.sh.

I removed a few carat and Browse, as they took some work to get working, and I don't use them. Another notable difference is that android does not have /tmp (or equivalent). I changed DirectoryTemporary() to return DirectoryHome().

Download here.