GapWWW

This is the source repository for the GAP website https://www.gap-system.org.

The GAP website is NOT hosted on GitHub pages, and therefore there is NO branch named gh-pages here. We host it elsewhere, but we use GitHub for collaborative work on the website. We welcome contributions ranging from fixed typos and updated details to suggestions regarding the structure of the website and its improved look.

For small improvements (e.g. correcting details and fixing typos), the procedure is as simple as just submitting an issue or pull request here. Please take into account that some content, in particular the packages list, is generated automatically from the metadata in PackageInfo.g files. Incorrect information there should not be changed via pull requests, but reported to package authors instead. If in doubt, just submit an issue before making a pull request, and we will be able to advise on further steps.

Testing the website locally

For larger changes, it is useful to build a local version of the GAP website first. This requires use of Jekyll. We recommend using Ruby's bundler. This can be installed on Debian or Ubuntu via apt-get install bundler. Then as a one-time setup, run

bundle config set --local path 'vendor/bundle'
bundle install

Afterwards, you can build a version of the website and open a local webserver to test it by entering

bundle exec jekyll serve

after which you can open http://localhost:4000 in a web browser to see a preview of the page. For more information on using Jekyll, please consult the Jekyll documentation.

Actually publishing changes to the website

After a change has been merged into the master branch of the GapWWW repository, it should automatically appear a short time later on the live website.

If this does not work, please submit an issue. Or, if you have SSH access to the webserver, you can try to debug the issue.

SSH access to the web servers

The GAP web server is hosted at the RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau. Primary admin for this web server is Max Horn mhorn@rptu.de. If you feel you have need to directly access the server via SSH, contact him.

• SSH hostname: www-admin11.uni-kl.de
• Login:
  • www-gap-systems → www.gap-system.org
  • www-gap-docs → docs.gap-system.org
  • www-gap-files → files.gap-system.org
• SSH hostname: www-admin12.rz.rptu.de
• Login:
  • www-gap-dev → dev.gap-system.org

Please consult etc/README.server.md for more information.

Updating GAP and package manuals on docs.gap-system.org

The manuals for GAP and packages are served from a separate subdomain, namely https://docs.gap-system.org. The files served there are from the directory /srv/www/www-gap-docs/data/http on www-admin11.uni-kl.de, username www-gap-docs.

Note that this subdomain is relatively new: the manuals used to be under https://www.gap-system.org/Manuals/. To ensure URLs with this prefix keep working, a RedirectMatch rule for the Apache webserver is configured via the .htaccess file in the GapWWW repository.

Additional redirects are configured in a separate .htaccess file

The GAP and package manuals themselves are not in this git repository, as they are too large. This is why they are only on the server, in the directory /srv/www/www-gap-docs/data/http. (As a consequence, please be extra careful about modifying its content! While we can restore from a backup, its far more work than restoring a git clone of the website). The content of this directory currently look as follows; note that we keep the manuals for each GAP release (however, this is currently not advertised or used anywhere):

• v4.11.1/ -- created by extract_manuals.py
  • doc/
  • pkg/
• v4.12.0/ -- created by extract_manuals.py
  • doc/
  • pkg/
• latest: symlink to v4.12.0
• doc: symlink to latest/doc
• pkg: symlink to latest/pkg
• index.html: simple placeholder
• .htaccess: additional redirect rules; copy of etc/docs.htaccess in the GapWWW repository

The directories v4.X.Y can be (re)generated from a GAP installation and the corresponding .json file in _data/package-infos/. For example:

etc/extract_manuals.py /usr/local/gap-4.27.3  _data/package-infos/4-27-3.json

will produce a directory Manuals which then could be renamed to /srv/www/www-gap-docs/data/http/v4.27.3. Make sure to also update the latest symlink suitably.

Updating files on files.gap-system.org

Various archives for GAP and packages are served from a separate subdomain, namely https://files.gap-system.org. The files served there are from the directory /srv/www/www-gap-docs/files/http on www-admin11.uni-kl.de, username www-gap-files.