Getting started with Pynac development

Pynac is a C++ library for symbolic manipulation based on GiNaC. It can use arbitrary Python objects for numeric types. Since Pynac is closely tied to Sage, setting up a development environment and finding your way around initially can be troublesome. This is a short tutorial to provide help with the first steps.

GiNaC has great documentation. It's a good idea to read the tutorial to get familiar with the library. The reference manual for GiNaC can also be useful to find your way around.

In order to start working on the source code go to your SAGE_ROOT and run

./sage -f -m spkg/standard/pynac-*.spkg

This will install the latest version of Pynac that comes with Sage and leave the package files in the directory spkg/build/pynac-<version>. You will find the Pynac sources in spkg/build/pynac-<version>/src, most files you'll want to work on are in the subdirectory ginac.

After you make changes to the Pynac files, in order to build your changes and install them so Sage will see them, get in a Sage shell with

./sage -sh

Go to the Pynac source directory

cd spkg/build/pynac-*/src

and run

make install