Sage Installation Guide

Release 9.0

The Sage Development Team

Jan 01, 2020

 CONTENTS

1 Linux package managers 3

2 Install from Pre-built Binaries 5

2.1 Download Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3 macOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.4 Microsoft Windows (Cygwin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3 Install from conda-forge 7

4 Install from Source Code 9

4.1 Supported platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2 Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.3 Additional software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.4 Step-by-step installation procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.5 Make targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.6 Environment variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.7 Installation in a Multiuser Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

5 Launching SageMath 27

6 Standard packages 29

7 Troubleshooting 31

Index 33

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You can install SageMath either from a package manager, a pre-built binary tarball or from its sources.
Installing SageMath from your distribution package manager is the preferred and fastest solution (dependencies will
be automatically taken care of and SageMath will be using your system Python). It is the case at least for the following
GNU/Linux distributions: Debian version >= 9, Ubuntu version >= 18.04, Arch Linux, and NixOS. If you are in this
situation, see Linux package managers.
If your operating system does not provide SageMath, you can also use a pre-built binary. See the section Install from
Pre-built Binaries.
Or you could install the sage package from the conda-forge project. See the section Install from conda-forge.
By compiling SageMath from its sources you might be able to run a slightly more up-to-date version. You can also
modify it and contribute back to the project. Compiling SageMath might take up to 4 hours on a recent computer. To
build SageMath from source, go to the section Install from Source Code.
Note that there are other alternatives to use SageMath that completely avoid installing it:
• the Sage Debian Live USB key: a full featured USB key that contains a whole Linux distribution including
SageMath. This might be an option if you fail installing SageMath on your operating system.
• CoCalc: an online service that provides SageMath and many other tools.
• Sage Cell Server: an online service for elementary SageMath computations.
• Docker images: SageMath in a container for more experienced users.
The rest of this document describes how to install SageMath from pre-built binaries and from sources.

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2 CONTENTS
 CHAPTER

ONE

LINUX PACKAGE MANAGERS

On GNU/Linux Debian version >= 9, Ubuntu version >= 18.04, Arch Linux there are three packages to install
• sagemath (for the binaries)
• sagemath-jupyter (for the browser interface)
• and the documentation which is called sagemath-doc-en on Debian/Ubuntu and sagemath-doc on Arch
Linux.
Gentoo users might want to give a try to sage-on-gentoo.

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4 Chapter 1. Linux package managers

 CHAPTER

TWO

INSTALL FROM PRE-BUILT BINARIES

Installation from a pre-built binary tarball is an easy and fast way to install Sage. Note that on GNU/Linux a preferred
way is to use your package manager (e.g. apt, pacman, yum).
In all cases, we assume that you have a computer with at least 4 GB of free disk space.

2.1 Download Guide

Not sure what to download? Just follow these steps.

• Determine your operating system (Windows, Linux or macOS).
• According to your operating system, go to the appropriate Download section of the SageMath website.
• Choose a download server (aka mirror) that is close to your location.
• Download the binary that is appropriate to your system. Depending on your operating system you might need
additional information such as your CPU type (e.g. 64 bits or 32 bits) and your operating system version. If you
use macOS you will have the choice between a tarball (whose names ends with tar.bz2) and two kinds of
mountable disk images (whose names end with app.dmg and simply .dmg). Except for Windows, the naming
scheme of the files is always sage-VERSION-OS-CPU.EXTENSION where EXTENSION can be tar.gz,
tar.bz2, dmg or app.dmg.
• Then choose the appropriate section below corresponding to your situation.

2.2 Linux

Make sure that you have an SSL library installed (OpenSSL recommended).
It is highly recommended that you have LaTeX installed. If you want to view animations, you should install either
ImageMagick or ffmpeg. ImageMagick or dvipng is also used for displaying some LaTeX output in the notebooks.
Choose an appropriate directory where to install Sage. If you have administrator rights on your computer a good
choice is /opt otherwise it can be anywhere in your home directory. Avoid spaces and Unicode characters in the path
name.
Next, download the latest binary tarball available (see “Download Guide” above). The tarball name should end with
.tar.gz or .tar.bz2. If you want to use the .dmg or .app.dmg for macOS switch to the next section.
Unpack the tarball where you intend to install Sage. This is done from the command line using the tar program.
Next, to launch Sage, go to the SageMath directory and run the program that is called sage (via ./sage on the
command line).
The first time you run Sage, you will see a message like

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Rewriting paths for your new installation directory

===================================================

This might take a few minutes but only has to be done once.

patching ... (long list of files)

At this point, you can no longer move your Sage installation and expect Sage to function.
Once you are able to launch Sage you might want to create a shortcut so that sage just works from the command line.
To do so simply use the ln program from the command line:

$ sudo ln -s /path/to/SageMath/sage /usr/local/bin/sage

where /path/to/SageMath/sage is the actual path to your SageMath installation.

2.3 macOS

On macOS there are three possible binaries for each version. They can be recognized by their suffixes:
• tar.bz2: a binary tarball
• dmg: a compressed image of the binary
• app.dmg: a compressed image of a full macOS application (with shortcuts)
This section explains how to install from dmg or app.dmg. For the installation of the binary tarball tar.bz2 just
follow the steps of the Linux installation.
After downloading the file, double click on the dmg file to mount it which will take some time. Then drag the folder
SageMath that just appeared to /Applications/. If you did download the app, an icon should have appeared on
your desktop. Simply use it. In both situations you might want to have shortcuts so that sage in the console simply
works out of the box. For that purpose, follows the steps at the end of the section “Linux”.

2.4 Microsoft Windows (Cygwin)

SageMath on Windows requires a 64-bit Windows (which is likely to be the case on a modern computer). If you
happen to have a 32-bit Windows, you can consider the alternatives mentioned at the end of Welcome to the SageMath
Installation Guide.
To install SageMath on Windows, just download the installer (see the above “Download Guide” section) and run it.

6 Chapter 2. Install from Pre-built Binaries

 CHAPTER

THREE

INSTALL FROM CONDA-FORGE

SageMath can be installed from conda-forge on Linux and macOS running x86-64 that most current desktops and
laptops use.
To install SageMath, install Miniconda and then type in the following commands in a terminal:
• Add the conda-forge channel: conda config --add channels conda-forge
• Create a new environment containing SageMath: conda create -n sage sage python=X, where X
is version of Python, e.g. 2.7
• Enter the new environment: conda activate sage
• Start SageMath: sage

Note: The dependency resolution process of conda is slow; a faster experimental resolver we tried with success is
mamba. It can be used as follows.

conda install mamba -c conda-forge # installs mamba

mamba create -n sage sage -c conda-forge # replaces "conda create..."

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 CHAPTER

FOUR

INSTALL FROM SOURCE CODE

Table of contents

• Install from Source Code

– Supported platforms
– Prerequisites
– Additional software
– Step-by-step installation procedure
– Make targets
– Environment variables
– Installation in a Multiuser Environment

More familiarity with computers may be required to build Sage from the source code. If you do have all the pre-
requisite tools, the process should be completely painless, basically consisting in extracting the source tarball and
typing make. It can take your computer a while to build Sage from the source code, although the procedure is fully
automated and should need no human intervention.
Building Sage from the source code has the major advantage that your install will be optimized for your particular
computer and should therefore offer better performance and compatibility than a binary install. Moreover, it offers
you full development capabilities: you can change absolutely any part of Sage or the programs on which it depends,
and recompile the modified parts.
Download the Sage source code or get it from the git repository. Note: if you are installing Sage for development, you
should rather follow the instructions in The Sage Developer’s Guide.
It is also possible to download a binary distribution for some operating systems, rather than compiling from source.

4.1 Supported platforms

See https://wiki.sagemath.org/SupportedPlatforms for the full list of platforms on which Sage is supported and the
level of support for these systems.
Sage is supported on a number of Linux, macOS , Sun/Oracle Solaris releases, but not necessarily all versions of these
operating systems. There is no native version of Sage which installs on Microsoft Windows, although Sage can be
used on Windows with the aid of a virtual machine or the Cygwin Linux API layer.
On the list of supported platforms, you can find details about ports to other operating systems or processors which may
be taking place.

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4.2 Prerequisites

4.2.1 General requirements

This section details the technical prerequisites needed on all platforms. See also the System-specific requirements
below.

Disk space and memory

Your computer comes with at least 6 GB of free disk space running one of the supported versions of an operating
system listed at https://wiki.sagemath.org/SupportedPlatforms. It is recommended to have at least 2 GB of RAM, but
you might get away with less (be sure to have some swap space in this case).

Command-line tools

In addition to standard POSIX utilities and the bash shell, the following standard command-line development tools
must be installed on your computer:
• A C/C++ compiler: Since SageMath builds its own GCC if needed, a wide variety of C/C++ compilers is
supported. Many GCC versions work, from as old as version 4.8 (but we recommend at least 5.1) to the most
recent release. Clang also works. See also Using alternative compilers.
• make: GNU make, version 3.80 or later. Version 3.82 or later is recommended.
• m4: GNU m4 1.4.2 or later (non-GNU or older versions might also work).
• perl: version 5.8.0 or later.
• ar and ranlib: can be obtained as part of GNU binutils.
• tar: GNU tar version 1.17 or later, or BSD tar.
• python: Python >= 3.6.

Libraries

Some Sage components (and among them, most notably, Python) “use the OpenSSL library for added performance if
made available by the operating system” (literal quote from the Python license). Testing has proved that:
• Sage can be successfully built against other SSL libraries (at least GnuTLS).
• Sage’s -pip facility (used to install some Sage packages) is disabled when Sage is compiled against those
libraries.
Furthermore, the Sage license mention that the hashlib library (used in Sage) uses OpenSSL.
Therefore, the OpenSSL library is recommended. However, Sage’s license seems to clash with OpenSSL license,
which makes the distribution of OpenSSL along with Sage sources dubious. However, there is no problem for Sage
using a systemwide-installed OpenSSL library.
In any case, you must install systemwide your chosen library and its development files.

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Fortran and compiler suites

Sage installation also needs a Fortran compiler. Officially we support gfortran from GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).
If C and C++ compilers also come from there (i.e., gcc and g++), their versions should match. Alternatively, one may
use C and C++ compilers from Clang: a C language family frontend for LLVM, and thus matching versions of clang,
clang++ , along with a recent gfortran. (Flang (or other LLVM-based Fortran compilers) are not officially supported,
however it is possible to to build Sage using flang, with some extra efforts needed to set various flags; this is work in
progress at the moment (May 2019)).
Therefore, if you plan on using your own GCC compilers, then make sure that their versions match.
Alternatively, Sage includes a GCC package, so that C, C++ and Fortran compilers will be built when the build system
detects that it is needed, e.g., non-GCC compilers, or versions of the GCC compilers known to miscompile some
components of Sage, or simply a missing Fortran compiler. In any case, you always need at least a C/C++ compiler to
build the GCC package and its prerequisites before the compilers it provides can be used.
Note that you can always override this behavior through the configure options --without-system-gcc and
--with-system-gcc, see Using alternative compilers.

Other notes

After extracting the Sage tarball, the subdirectory upstream contains the source distributions for everything on
which Sage depends. If cloned from a git repository, the upstream tarballs will be downloaded, verified, and cached as
part of the Sage installation process. We emphasize that all of this software is included with Sage, so you do not have
to worry about trying to download and install any one of these packages (such as Python, for example) yourself.
When the Sage installation program is run, it will check that you have each of the above-listed prerequisites, and
inform you of any that are missing, or have unsuitable versions.

4.2.2 System-specific requirements

On macOS, there are various developer tools needed which may require some registration on Apple’s developer site;
see macOS prerequisite installation.
On Redhat-derived systems not all perl components are installed by default and you might have to install the perl-
ExtUtils-MakeMaker package.
On Cygwin, the lapack and liblapack-devel packages are required to provide ATLAS support as the Sage package
for ATLAS is not built by default.

4.2.3 Installing prerequisites

To check if you have the above prerequisites installed, for example perl, type:

$ command -v perl

or:

$ which perl

on the command line. If it gives an error (or returns nothing), then either perl is not installed, or it is installed but
not in your PATH.

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Linux recommended installation

On Linux systems (e.g., Ubuntu, Redhat, etc), ar and ranlib are in the binutils package. The other programs are
usually located in packages with their respective names. Assuming you have sufficient privileges, you can install
the binutils and other necessary/standard components. The lists provided below are longer than the minimal
prerequisites, which are basically binutils, gcc/clang, make, tar, but there is no real need to build compilers
and other standard tools and libraries on a modern Linux system, in order to be able to build Sage. If you do not have
the privileges to do this, ask your system administrator to do this, or build the components from source code. The
method of installing additional software varies from distribution to distribution, but on a Debian based system (e.g.
Ubuntu or Mint), you would use apt-get:

# debian (Buster or newer) / ubuntu

$ sudo apt-get install binutils pixz gcc g++ gfortran make m4 perl tar \
git patch openssl libssl-dev libz-dev bc libbz2-dev liblzma-dev libgmp-dev \
libffi-dev libgf2x-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libzmq3-dev curl yasm \
pkg-config libntl-dev libmpfr-dev libmpc-dev libflint-dev \
libpcre3-dev libgd-dev libflint-dev libflint-arb-dev \
libsymmetrica2-dev gmp-ecm libecm-dev libisl-dev libgivaro-dev \
libpari-dev pari-gp2c libec-dev liblrcalc-dev \
libm4ri-dev libm4rie-dev liblfunction-dev lcalc

# redhat / fedora / centos

$ sudo yum install binutils xz gcc gcc-c++ gcc-gfortran make m4 perl \
tar git patch perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker openssl openssl-devel zlib-devel \
bzip2 bzip2-devel xz-devel gmp gmp-devel libcurl-devel curl yasm \
pkg-config ntl-devel mpfr-devel libmpc-devel libsymmetrica-devel \
eclib-devel gmp-ecm-devel lrcalc-devel isl-devel givaro-devel \
pari-devel pari-elldata pari-seadata pari-galdata pari-galpol \
m4ri-devel m4rie-devel L-function-devel

(These examples suppose that you choose to use a systemwide OpenSSL library.) In addition, if you don’t want Sage
to build other packages that might be available from your OS, cf. the growing list of such packages on trac ticket
#27330, install:

# debian / ubuntu -- not for standard Sage spkgs

$ sudo apt-get install cmake libterm-readline-gnu-perl ninja-build \
librw-dev

# redhat / fedora / centos -- not for standard Sage spkgs

$ sudo yum install cmake perl-Term-ReadLine-Gnu ninja-build rw-devel

On other Linux systems, you might use rpm, yum, or other package managers.

macOS prerequisite installation

On macOS systems, you need a recent version of Command Line Tools. It provides all the above requirements.
If you have already installed Xcode (which at the time of writing is freely available in the Mac App Store, or through
https://developer.apple.com/downloads/ provided you registered for an Apple Developer account), you can install the
command line tools from there as well.
• With OS X Mavericks or Yosemite, run the command xcode-select --install from a Terminal window
and click “Install” in the pop-up dialog box.
• Using OS X Mountain Lion or earlier, run Xcode, open its “Downloads” preference pane and install the com-
mand line tools from there.

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• On pre-Lion macOS systems, the command line tools are not available as a separate download and you have to
install the full-blown Xcode supporting your system version.
If you have not installed Xcode you can get these tools as a relatively small download, but it does require a registration.
• First, you will need to register as an Apple Developer at https://developer.apple.com/register/.
• Having done so, you should be able to download it for free at https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.
action?=command%20line%20tools
• Alternately, https://developer.apple.com/opensource/ should have a link to Command Line Tools.

Other platforms

On Solaris, you would use pkgadd and on OpenSolaris ipf to install the necessary software.
On Cygwin, you would use the setup.exe program. As on Linux systems, ar and ranlib are provided by
the binutils package. As far as compilers are concerned, you should either install matching versions of the
gcc4-core, gcc4-g++, and gcc4-gfortran packages, or the gcc4-core package alone if you plan on using
Sage’s own GCC.
On other systems, check the documentation for your particular operating system.

4.2.4 Specific notes for make and tar

On macOS, the system-wide BSD tar supplied will build Sage, so there is no need to install the GNU tar.
On Solaris or OpenSolaris, the Sun/Oracle versions of make and tar are unsuitable for building Sage. Therefore,
you must have the GNU versions of make and tar installed and they must be the first make and tar in your PATH.
On Solaris 10, a version of GNU make may be found at /usr/sfw/bin/gmake, but you will need to copy it
somewhere else and rename it to make. The same is true for GNU tar; a version of GNU tar may be found at
/usr/sfw/bin/gtar, but it will need to be copied somewhere else and renamed to tar. It is recommended to
create a directory $HOME/bins-for-sage and to put the GNU versions of tar and make in that directory. Then
ensure that $HOME/bins-for-sage is first in your PATH. That’s because Sage also needs /usr/ccs/bin in
your PATH to execute programs like ar and ranlib, but /usr/ccs/bin has the Sun/Oracle versions of make
and tar in it.
If you attempt to build Sage on AIX or HP-UX, you will need to install both GNU make and GNU tar.

4.2.5 Using alternative compilers

Sage developers tend to use fairly recent versions of GCC. Nonetheless, the Sage build process on Linux should
succeed with any reasonable C/C++ compiler; (we do not recommend GCC older than version 5.1). This is because
Sage will build GCC first (if needed) and then use that newly built GCC to compile Sage.
If you don’t want this and want to try building Sage with a different set of compilers, you need to pass Sage’s .
/configure compiler names, via environment variables CC, CXX, and FC, for C, C++, and Fortran compilers,
respectively, e.g. if you C compiler is clang, your C++ compiler is clang++, and your Fortran compiler is flang
then you would need to run:

$ CC=clang CXX=clang++ FC=flang ./configure

before running make. It is recommended that you inspect the output of ./configure in order to check that Sage
will not try to build GCC. Namely, there should be lines like:

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gcc-7.2.0 will not be installed (configure check)

...
gfortran-7.2.0 will not be installed (configure check)

indicating that Sage will no attempt to build gcc/g++/gfortran.

If you are interested in working on support for commercial compilers from HP, IBM, Intel, Sun/Oracle, etc, please
email the sage-devel mailing list at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel.

4.3 Additional software

4.3.1 Recommended programs

The following programs are recommended. They are not strictly required at build time or at run time, but provide
additional capabilities:
• dvipng.
• ffmpeg.
• ImageMagick.
• LaTeX: highly recommended.
It is highly recommended that you have LaTeX installed, but it is not required. The most popular packaging is TeX
Live, which can be installed following the directions on their web site. On Linux systems you can alternatively install
your distribution’s texlive packages:

$ sudo apt-get install texlive # debian

$ sudo yum install texlive # redhat

or similar commands. In addition to the base TeX Live install, you may need some optional TeX Live packages, for
example country-specific babel packages for the localized Sage documentation.
If you don’t have either ImageMagick or ffmpeg, you won’t be able to view animations. ffmpeg can produce anima-
tions in more different formats than ImageMagick, and seems to be faster than ImageMagick when creating animated
GIFs. Either ImageMagick or dvipng is used for displaying some LaTeX output in the Sage notebook.

4.3.2 Notebook additional features

attention: Sage’s notebook is deprecated. Use Jupyter notebook instead

By default, the Sage notebook uses the HTTP protocol when you type the command notebook(). To run the
notebook in secure mode by typing notebook(secure=True) which uses the HTTPS protocol, or to use OpenID
authentication, you need to follow specific installation steps described in Building the notebook with SSL support.
Although all necessary components are provided through Sage optional packages, i.e., even if you choose not to
install a systemwide version of OpenSSL, you can install a local (Sage_specific) version of OpenSSL by using Sage’s
openssl package and running sage -i openssl as suggested in Building the notebook with SSL support (this
requires an Internet connection). Alternatively, you might prefer to install OpenSSL and the OpenSSL development
headers globally on your system, as described above.
Finally, if you intend to distribute the notebook load onto several Sage servers, you will surely want to setup an SSH
server and generate SSH keys. This can be achieved using OpenSSH.
On Linux systems, the OpenSSH server, client and utilities are usually provided by the openssh-server and openssh-
client packages and can be installed using:

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$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client

or similar commands.

4.3.3 Tcl/Tk

If you want to use Tcl/Tk libraries in Sage, you need to install the Tcl/Tk and its development headers before building
Sage. Sage’s Python will then automatically recognize your system’s install of Tcl/Tk.
On Linux systems, these are usually provided by the tk and tk-dev (or tk-devel) packages which can be installed
using:

$ sudo apt-get install tk tk-dev

or similar commands.
If you installed Sage first, all is not lost. You just need to rebuild Sage’s Python and any part of Sage relying on it:

$ sage -f python3 # rebuild Python3

$ make # rebuild components of Sage depending on Python

after installing the Tcl/Tk development libraries as above.

If

sage: import _tkinter

sage: import Tkinter

does not raise an ImportError, then it worked.

4.4 Step-by-step installation procedure

4.4.1 General procedure

Installation from source is (potentially) very easy, because the distribution contains (essentially) everything on which
Sage depends.
Make sure there are no spaces in the path name for the directory in which you build: several of Sage’s components
will not build if there are spaces in the path. Running Sage from a directory with spaces in its name will also fail.
1. Go to https://www.sagemath.org/download-source.html, select a mirror, and download the file sage-x.y.
tar.
This tarfile contains the source code for Sage and the source for all programs on which Sage depends. Note that
this file is not compressed; it’s just a plain tarball (which happens to be full of compressed files).
Download it into any directory you have write access to, preferably on a fast filesystem, avoiding NFS and the
like. On personal computers, any subdirectory of your HOME directory should do. Note that once you have built
Sage (by running make, as described below), you will not be able to move or rename its directory without likely
breaking Sage.
2. Extract the tarfile:

$ tar xvf sage-x.y.tar

This creates a directory sage-x.y.

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3. Change into that directory:

$ cd sage-x.y

This is Sage’s home directory. It is also referred to as SAGE_ROOT or the top level Sage directory.
4. Optional, but highly recommended: Read the README.md file there.
5. Optional: Set various other environment variables that influence the build process; see Environment variables.
Some environment variables deserve a special mention: 𝐶𝐶, 𝐶𝑋𝑋 and 𝐹 𝐶; and on macOS, 𝑂𝐵𝐽𝐶 and
𝑂𝐵𝐽𝐶𝑋𝑋. Those variables defining your compilers can be set at configuration time and their values will be
recorded for further use at runtime. Those initial values are over-ridden if Sage builds its own compiler or they
are set to a different value again before calling Sage. Note that some packages will ignore the compiler settings
and use values deemed safe for that package on a particular OS.
6. Optional: Run the configure script to set some options that influence the build process.
• Choose the installation hierarchy (SAGE_LOCAL). The default is the local subdirectory of
SAGE_ROOT:

$ ./configure --prefix=SAGE_LOCAL

Note that in Sage’s build process, make builds and installs (make install is a no-op). Therefore the
installation hierarchy must be writable by the user.
• Other options are available; see:

$ ./configure --help

7. Start the build process:

$ make

or if your system supports multiprocessing and you want to use several processes to build Sage:

$ MAKE='make -jNUM' make

to tell the make program to run NUM jobs in parallel when building Sage. This compiles Sage and all its
dependencies.

Note: macOS allows changing directories without using exact capitalization. Beware of this convenience when
compiling for macOS. Ignoring exact capitalization when changing into SAGE_ROOT can lead to build errors
for dependencies requiring exact capitalization in path names.

Note that you do not need to be logged in as root, since no files are changed outside of the sage-x.y directory.
In fact, it is inadvisable to build Sage as root, as the root account should only be used when absolutely
necessary and mistyped commands can have serious consequences if you are logged in as root. There has been
a bug reported (see trac ticket #9551) in Sage which would have overwritten a system file had the user been
logged in as root.
Typing make performs the usual steps for each Sage’s dependency, but installs all the resulting files into the
local build tree. Depending on the age and the architecture of your system, it can take from a few tens of minutes
to several hours to build Sage from source. On really slow hardware, it can even take a few days to build Sage.
Each component of Sage has its own build log, saved in SAGE_ROOT/logs/pkgs. If the build of Sage
fails, you will see a message mentioning which package(s) failed to build and the location of the log file for
each failed package. If this happens, then paste the contents of these log file(s) to the Sage support newsgroup at

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https://groups.google.com/group/sage-support. If the log files are very large (and many are), then don’t paste the
whole file, but make sure to include any error messages. It would also be helpful to include the type of operating
system (Linux, macOS, Solaris, OpenSolaris, Cygwin, or any other system), the version and release date of that
operating system and the version of the copy of Sage you are using. (There are no formal requirements for bug
reports – just send them; we appreciate everything.)
See Make targets for some targets for the make command, Environment variables for additional information on
useful environment variables used by Sage, and Building the notebook with SSL support for additional instruc-
tion on how to build the notebook with SSL support.
8. To start Sage, you can now simply type from Sage’s home directory:

$ ./sage

You should see the Sage prompt, which will look something like this:

$ sage
+ +
SageMath version 8.8, Release Date: 2019-06-26
Using Python 3.7.3. Type "help()" for help.
+ +
sage:

Note that Sage should take well under a minute when it starts for the first time, but can take several minutes if
the file system is slow or busy. Since Sage opens a lot of files, it is preferable to install Sage on a fast filesystem
if possible.
Just starting successfully tests that many of the components built correctly. Note that this should have been
already automatically tested during the build process. If the above is not displayed (e.g., if you get a massive
traceback), please report the problem, e.g., at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-support.
After Sage has started, try a simple command:

sage: 2 + 2
4

Or something slightly more complicated:

sage: factor(2005)
5 * 401

9. Optional, but highly recommended: Test the install by typing ./sage --testall. This runs most exam-
ples in the source code and makes sure that they run exactly as claimed. To test all examples, use ./sage
--testall --optional=all --long; this will run examples that take a long time, and those that de-
pend on optional packages and software, e.g., Mathematica or Magma. Some (optional) examples will therefore
likely fail.
Alternatively, from within $SAGE_ROOT, you can type make test (respectively make ptest) to run all
the standard test code serially (respectively in parallel).
Testing the Sage library can take from half an hour to several hours, depending on your hardware. On slow
hardware building and testing Sage can even take several days!
10. Optional: Check the interfaces to any other software that you have available. Note that each interface calls
its corresponding program by a particular name: Mathematica is invoked by calling math, Maple by calling
maple, etc. The easiest way to change this name or perform other customizations is to create a redirection
script in $SAGE_ROOT/local/bin. Sage inserts this directory at the front of your PATH, so your script may
need to use an absolute path to avoid calling itself; also, your script should pass along all of its arguments. For
example, a maple script might look like:

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Sage Installation Guide, Release 9.0

#!/bin/sh

exec /etc/maple10.2/maple.tty "$@"

11. Optional: There are different possibilities to make using Sage a little easier:
• Make a symbolic link from /usr/local/bin/sage (or another directory in your PATH) to
$SAGE_ROOT/sage:

$ ln -s /path/to/sage-x.y/sage /usr/local/bin/sage

Now simply typing sage from any directory should be sufficient to run Sage.
• Copy $SAGE_ROOT/sage to a location in your PATH. If you do this, make sure you edit the line:

#SAGE_ROOT=/path/to/sage-version

at the beginning of the copied sage script according to the direction given there to something like:

SAGE_ROOT=<SAGE_ROOT>

(note that you have to change <SAGE_ROOT> above!). It is best to edit only the copy, not the original.
• For KDE users, create a bash script called sage containing the lines (note that you have to change
<SAGE_ROOT> below!):

#!/usr/bin/env bash

konsole -T "sage" -e <SAGE_ROOT>/sage

make it executable:

$ chmod a+x sage

and put it somewhere in your PATH.

You can also make a KDE desktop icon with this line as the command (under the Application tab of the
Properties of the icon, which you get my right clicking the mouse on the icon).
• On Linux and macOS systems, you can make an alias to $SAGE_ROOT/sage. For example, put some-
thing similar to the following line in your .bashrc file:

alias sage=<SAGE_ROOT>/sage

(Note that you have to change <SAGE_ROOT> above!) Having done so, quit your terminal emulator and
restart it. Now typing sage within your terminal emulator should start Sage.
12. Optional: Install optional Sage packages and databases. Type sage --optional to see a list of them (this
requires an Internet connection), or visit https://www.sagemath.org/packages/optional/. Then type sage -i
<package-name> to automatically download and install a given package.
13. Optional: Run the install_scripts command from within Sage to create GAP, GP, Maxima, Singular,
etc., scripts in your PATH. Type install_scripts? in Sage for details.
14. Have fun! Discover some amazing conjectures!

4.4.2 Building the notebook with SSL support

Read this section if you are intending to run a Sage notebook server for multiple users.

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For security, you may wish users to access the server using the HTTPS protocol (i.e., to run
notebook(secure=True)). You also may want to use OpenID for user authentication. The first of these re-
quires you to install pyOpenSSL, and they both require OpenSSL.
If you have OpenSSL and the OpenSSL development headers installed on your system, you can install pyOpenSSL by
building Sage and then typing:

$ ./sage -i pyopenssl

Alternatively, make ssl builds Sage and installs pyOpenSSL at once. Note that these commands require Internet
access.
If you are missing either OpenSSL or OpenSSL’s development headers, you can install a local copy of both into your
Sage installation first. Ideally, this should be done before installing Sage; otherwise, you should at least rebuild Sage’s
Python, and ideally any part of Sage relying on it. The procedure is as follows (again, with a computer connected to
the Internet). Starting from a fresh Sage tarball:

$ ./sage -i openssl
$ make ssl

And if you’ve already built Sage:

$ ./sage -i openssl
$ ./sage -f python3
$ make ssl

The third line will rebuild all parts of Sage that depend on Python; this can take a while.

4.4.3 Rebasing issues on Cygwin

Building on Cygwin will occasionally require “rebasing” dll files. Sage provides some scripts, located in
$SAGE_LOCAL/bin, to do so:
• sage-rebaseall.sh, a shell script which calls Cygwin’s rebaseall program. It must be run within a
dash shell from the SAGE_ROOT directory after all other Cygwin processes have been shut down and needs
write-access to the system-wide rebase database located at /etc/rebase.db.i386, which usually means
administrator privileges. It updates the system-wide database and adds Sage dlls to it, so that subsequent calls
to rebaseall will take them into account.
• sage-rebase.sh, a shell script which calls Cygwin’s rebase program together with the -O/
--oblivious option. It must be run within a shell from SAGE_ROOT directory. Contrary to the
sage-rebaseall.sh script, it neither updates the system-wide database, nor adds Sage dlls to it. Therefore,
subsequent calls to rebaseall will not take them into account.
• sage-rebaseall.bat (respectively sage-rebase.bat), an MS-DOS batch file which calls the
sage-rebaseall.sh (respectively sage-rebase.sh) script. It must be run from a Windows command
prompt, after adjusting SAGE_ROOT to the Windows location of Sage’s home directory, and, if Cygwin is
installed in a non-standard location, adjusting CYGWIN_ROOT as well.
Some systems may encounter this problem frequently enough to make building or testing difficult. If executing the
above scripts or directly calling rebaseall does not solve rebasing issues, deleting the system-wide database and
then regenerating it from scratch, e.g., by executing sage-rebaseall.sh, might help.
Finally, on Cygwin, one should also avoid the following:
• building in home directories of Windows domain users;
• building in paths with capital letters (see trac ticket #13343, although there has been some success doing so).

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4.5 Make targets

To build Sage from scratch, you would typically execute make in Sage’s home directory to build Sage and its HTML
documentation. The make command is pretty smart, so if your build of Sage is interrupted, then running make again
should cause it to pick up where it left off. The make command can also be given options, which control what is built
and how it is built:
• make build builds Sage: it compiles all of the Sage packages. It does not build the documentation.
• make doc builds Sage’s documentation in HTML format. Note that this requires that Sage be built first, so it
will automatically run make build first. Thus, running make doc is equivalent to running make.
• make doc-pdf builds Sage’s documentation in PDF format. This also requires that Sage be built first, so it
will automatically run make build.
• make doc-html-no-plot builds Sage’s documentation in html format but skips the inclusion of graphics
auto-generated using the .. PLOT markup and the sphinx_plot function. This is primarily intended for
use when producing certain binary distributions of Sage, to lower the size of the distribution. As of this writing
(December 2014, Sage 6.5), there are only a few such plots, adding about 4M to the local/share/doc/
sage/ directory. In the future, this may grow, of course. Note: after using this, if you want to build the
documentation and include the pictures, you should run make doc-clean, because the presence, or lack, of
pictures is cached in the documentation output. You can benefit from this no-plot feature with other make targets
by doing export SAGE_DOCBUILD_OPTS+=' --no-plot'
• make ptest and make ptestlong: these run Sage’s test suite. The first version skips tests that need
more than a few seconds to complete and those which depend on optional packages or additional software. The
second version includes the former, and so it takes longer. The “p” in ptest stands for “parallel”: tests are run
in parallel. If you want to run tests serially, you can use make test or make testlong instead. If you
want to run tests depending on optional packages and additional software, you can use make testall, make
ptestall, make testalllong, or make ptestalllong.
• make doc-clean removes several directories which are produced when building the documentation.
• make distclean restores the Sage directory to its state before doing any building: it is almost equivalent to
deleting Sage’s entire home directory and unpacking the source tarfile again, the only difference being that the
.git directory is preserved, so git branches are not deleted.

4.6 Environment variables

Sage uses several environment variables to control its build process. Most users won’t need to set any of these: the
build process just works on many platforms. (Note though that setting MAKE, as described below, can significantly
speed up the process.) Building Sage involves building about 100 packages, each of which has its own compilation
instructions.
The Sage source tarball already includes the sources for all standard packages, that is, it allows you to build Sage
without internet connection. The git repository, however, does not contain the source code for third-party packages.
Instead, it will be downloaded as needed (Note: you can run make download to force downloading packages before
building). Package downloads use the Sage mirror network, the nearest mirror will be determined automatically for
you. This is influenced by the following environment variable:
• SAGE_SERVER - Try the specified mirror first, before falling back to the official Sage mirror list. Note that
Sage will search the directory
– SAGE_SERVER/spkg/upstream
for clean upstream tarballs, and it searches the directories
– SAGE_SERVER/spkg/standard/,

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– SAGE_SERVER/spkg/optional/,
– SAGE_SERVER/spkg/experimental/,
– SAGE_SERVER/spkg/archive/
for old-style Sage packages.
Here are some of the more commonly used variables affecting the build process:
• MAKE - one useful setting for this variable when building Sage is MAKE='make -jNUM' to tell the make
program to run NUM jobs in parallel when building. Note that not all Sage packages (e.g. ATLAS) support this
variable.
Some people advise using more jobs than there are CPU cores, at least if the system is not heavily loaded and
has plenty of RAM; for example, a good setting for NUM might be between 1 and 1.5 times the number of cores.
In addition, the -l option sets a load limit: MAKE='make -j4 -l5.5, for example, tells make to try to use
four jobs, but to not start more than one job if the system load average is above 5.5. See the manual page for
GNU make: Command-line options and Parallel building.

Warning: Some users on single-core macOS machines have reported problems when building Sage with
MAKE='make -jNUM' with NUM greater than one.

• SAGE_NUM_THREADS - if set to a number, then when building the documentation, parallel doctesting, or
running sage -b, use this many threads. If this is not set, then determine the number of threads using the
value of the MAKE (see above) or MAKEFLAGS environment variables. If none of these specifies a number of
jobs, use one thread (except for parallel testing: there we use a default of the number of CPU cores, with a
maximum of 8 and a minimum of 2).
• V - if set to 0, silence the build. Instead of showing a detailed compilation log, only one line of output is shown
at the beginning and at the end of the installation of each Sage package. To see even less output, use:

$ make -s V=0

(Note that the above uses the syntax of setting a Makefile variable.)
• SAGE_CHECK - if set to yes, then during the build process, or when installing packages manually, run the test
suite for each package which has one. See also SAGE_CHECK_PACKAGES.
• SAGE_CHECK_PACKAGES - if SAGE_CHECK is set to yes, then the default behavior is to run test suites for all
spkgs which contain them. If SAGE_CHECK_PACKAGES is set, it should be a comma-separated list of strings
of the form package-name or !package-name. An entry package-name means to run the test suite for
the named package regardless of the setting of SAGE_CHECK. An entry !package-name means to skip its
test suite. So if this is set to mpir,!python3, then always run the test suite for MPIR, but always skip the
test suite for Python 3.

Note: As of this writing (September 2017, Sage 8.1), the test suites for the Python 2 and 3 spkgs fail on most
platforms. So when this variable is empty or unset, Sage uses a default of !python2,!python3.

• SAGE_INSTALL_GCC - Obsolete, do not use, to be removed

• SAGE_INSTALL_CCACHE - by default Sage doesn’t install ccache, however by setting
SAGE_INSTALL_CCACHE=yes Sage will install ccache. Because the Sage distribution is quite
large, the maximum cache is set to 4G. This can be changed by running sage -sh -c "ccache
--max-size=SIZE", where SIZE is specified in gigabytes, megabytes, or kilobytes by appending a “G”,
“M”, or “K”.

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Sage does not include the sources for ccache since it is an optional package. Because of this, it is necessary to
have an Internet connection while building ccache for Sage, so that Sage can pull down the necessary sources.
• SAGE_DEBUG - controls debugging support. There are three different possible values:
– Not set (or set to anything else than “yes” or “no”): build binaries with debugging symbols, but no special
debug builds. This is the default. There is no performance impact, only additional disk space is used.
– SAGE_DEBUG=no: no means no debugging symbols (that is, no gcc -g), which saves some disk space.
– SAGE_DEBUG=yes: build debug versions if possible (in particular, Python is built with additional de-
bugging turned on and Singular is built with a different memory manager). These will be notably slower
but, for example, make it much easier to pinpoint memory allocation problems.
• SAGE_PROFILE - controls profiling support. If this is set to yes, profiling support is enabled where possible.
Note that Python-level profiling is always available; This option enables profiling in Cython modules.
• SAGE_SPKG_INSTALL_DOCS - if set to yes, then install package-specific documentation to $SAGE_ROOT/
local/share/doc/PACKAGE_NAME/ when an spkg is installed. This option may not be supported by all
spkgs. Some spkgs might also assume that certain programs are available on the system (for example, latex
or pdflatex).
• SAGE_DOC_MATHJAX - by default, any LaTeX code in Sage’s documentation is processed by MathJax. If this
variable is set to no, then MathJax is not used – instead, math is processed using LaTeX and converted by dvipng
to image files, and then those files are included into the documentation. Typically, building the documentation
using LaTeX and dvipng takes longer and uses more memory and disk space than using MathJax.
• SAGE_DOCBUILD_OPTS - the value of this variable is passed as an argument to sage --docbuild all
html or sage --docbuild all pdf when you run make, make doc, or make doc-pdf. For ex-
ample, you can add --no-plot to this variable to avoid building the graphics coming from the .. PLOT
directive within the documentation, or you can add --include-tests-blocks to include all “TESTS”
blocks in the reference manual. Run sage --docbuild help to see the full list of options.
• SAGE_BUILD_DIR - the default behavior is to build each spkg in a subdirectory of $SAGE_ROOT/
local/var/tmp/sage/build/; for example, build version 3.8.3.p12 of atlas in the directory
$SAGE_ROOT/local/var/tmp/sage/build/atlas-3.8.3.p12/. If this variable is set, then build
in $SAGE_BUILD_DIR/atlas-3.8.3.p12/ instead. If the directory $SAGE_BUILD_DIR does not ex-
ist, it is created. As of this writing (Sage 4.8), when building the standard Sage packages, 1.5 gigabytes of free
space are required in this directory (or more if SAGE_KEEP_BUILT_SPKGS=yes – see below); the exact
amount of required space varies from platform to platform. For example, the block size of the file system will
affect the amount of space used, since some spkgs contain many small files.

Warning: The variable SAGE_BUILD_DIR must be set to the full path name of either an existing directory
for which the user has write permissions, or to the full path name of a nonexistent directory which the user
has permission to create. The path name must contain no spaces.

• SAGE_KEEP_BUILT_SPKGS - the default behavior is to delete each build directory – the appropriate sub-
directory of $SAGE_ROOT/local/var/tmp/sage/build or $SAGE_BUILD_DIR – after each spkg is
successfully built, and to keep it if there were errors installing the spkg. Set this variable to yes to keep the
subdirectory regardless. Furthermore, if you install an spkg for which there is already a corresponding subdi-
rectory, for example left over from a previous build, then the default behavior is to delete that old subdirectory.
If this variable is set to yes, then the old subdirectory is moved to $SAGE_ROOT/local/var/tmp/sage/
build/old/ (or $SAGE_BUILD_DIR/old), overwriting any already existing file or directory with the same
name.

Note: After a full build of Sage (as of version 4.8), these subdirectories can take up to 6 gigabytes of storage,
in total, depending on the platform and the block size of the file system. If you always set this variable to yes,

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it can take even more space: rebuilding every spkg would use double the amount of space, and any upgrades to
spkgs would create still more directories, using still more space.

Note: In an existing Sage installation, running sage -i -s <package-name> or sage -f -s

<package-name> installs the spkg <package-name> and keeps the corresponding build directory; thus
setting SAGE_KEEP_BUILT_SPKGS to yes mimics this behavior when building Sage from scratch or when
installing individual spkgs. So you can set this variable to yes instead of using the -s flag for sage -i and
sage -f.

• SAGE_FAT_BINARY - to build binaries that will run on the widest range of target CPUs set this variable to
yes before building Sage. This does not make the binaries relocatable, it only avoids newer CPU instruction set
extensions. For relocatable (=can be moved to a different directory) binaries, you must use https://github.com/
sagemath/binary-pkg
• SAGE_SUDO - set this to sudo -E or to any other command prefix that is necessary to write into a instal-
lation hierarchy (SAGE_LOCAL) owned by root or another user. Note that this command needs to preserve
environment variable settings (plain sudo does not).
Not all Sage packages currently support SAGE_SUDO.
Therefore this environment variable is most useful when a system administrator wishes to install an additional
Sage package that supports SAGE_SUDO, into a root-owned installation hierarchy (SAGE_LOCAL).
Variables to set if you’re trying to build Sage with an unusual setup, e.g., an unsupported machine or an unusual
compiler:
• SAGE_PORT - if you try to build Sage on a platform which is recognized as being unsupported (e.g. AIX,
or HP-UX), or with a compiler which is unsupported (anything except GCC), you will see a message saying
something like:

You are attempting to build Sage on IBM's AIX operating system,

which is not a supported platform for Sage yet. Things may or
may not work. If you would like to help port Sage to AIX,
please join the sage-devel discussion list -- see
https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel
The Sage community would also appreciate any patches you submit.

To get past this message and try building Sage anyway,

export the variable SAGE_PORT to something non-empty.

If this is case and you want to try to build Sage anyway, follow the directions: set SAGE_PORT to something
non-empty (and expect to run into problems).
Environment variables dealing with specific Sage packages:
• SAGE_MP_LIBRARY - to use an alternative library in place of MPIR for multiprecision integer arithmetic.
Supported values are
MPIR (default choice), GMP.
• SAGE_ATLAS_ARCH - if you are compiling ATLAS (in particular, if SAGE_ATLAS_LIB is not set), you
can use this environment variable to set a particular architecture and instruction set extension, to control the
maximum number of threads ATLAS can use, and to trigger the installation of a static library (which is disabled
by default unless building our custom shared libraries fails). The syntax is
SAGE_ATLAS_ARCH=[threads:n,][static,]arch[,isaext1][,isaext2]...[,
isaextN].

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While ATLAS comes with precomputed timings for a variety of CPUs, it only uses them if it finds an exact
match. Otherwise, ATLAS runs through a lengthy automated tuning process in order to optimize performance
for your particular system, which can take several days on slow and unusual systems. You drastically reduce the
total Sage compile time if you manually select a suitable architecture. It is recommended to specify a suitable
architecture on laptops or other systems with CPU throttling or if you want to distribute the binaries. Available
architectures are
POWER3, POWER4, POWER5, PPCG4, PPCG5, POWER6, POWER7, IBMz9, IBMz10, IBMz196,
x86x87, x86SSE1, x86SSE2, x86SSE3, P5, P5MMX, PPRO, PII, PIII, PM, CoreSolo,
CoreDuo, Core2Solo, Core2, Corei1, Corei2, Atom, P4, P4E, Efficeon, K7, HAMMER,
AMD64K10h, AMDDOZER, UNKNOWNx86, IA64Itan, IA64Itan2, USI, USII, USIII, USIV,
UST2, UnknownUS, MIPSR1xK, MIPSICE9, ARMv7.
and instruction set extensions are
VSX, AltiVec, AVXMAC, AVXFMA4, AVX, SSE3, SSE2, SSE1, 3DNow, NEON.
In addition, you can also set
– SAGE_ATLAS_ARCH=fast which picks defaults for a modern (2-3 year old) CPU of your processor
line, and
– SAGE_ATLAS_ARCH=base which picks defaults that should work for a ~10 year old CPU.
For example,
SAGE_ATLAS_ARCH=Corei2,AVX,SSE3,SSE2,SSE1
would be appropriate for a Core i7 CPU.
• SAGE_ATLAS_LIB - if you have an installation of ATLAS on your system and you want Sage to use it instead
of building and installing its own version of ATLAS, set this variable to be the directory containing your ATLAS
installation. It should contain the files libatlas, liblapack, libcblas, libf77blas (and optionally
libptcblas and libptf77blas for multi-threaded computations), with extensions .a, .so, or .dylib.
For backward compatibility, the libraries may also be in the subdirectory SAGE_ATLAS_LIB/lib/.
• SAGE_MATPLOTLIB_GUI - if set to anything non-empty except no, then Sage will attempt to build the graph-
ical backend when it builds the matplotlib package.
• PARI_CONFIGURE - use this to pass extra parameters to PARI’s Configure script, for example to specify
graphics support (which is disabled by default). See the file build/pkgs/pari/spkg-install for more
information.
• SAGE_TUNE_PARI: If yes, enable PARI self-tuning. Note that this can be time-consuming. If you set
this variable to “yes”, you will also see this: WARNING: Tuning PARI/GP is unreliable. You
may find your build of PARI fails, or PARI/GP does not work properly once
built. We recommend to build this package with SAGE_CHECK="yes".
• PARI_MAKEFLAGS: The value of this variable is passed as an argument to the $MAKE command when com-
piling PARI.
Some standard environment variables which are used by Sage:
• CC - while some programs allow you to use this to specify your C compiler, not every Sage package recognizes
this. If GCC is installed within Sage, CC is ignored and Sage’s gcc is used instead.
• CPP - similarly, this will set the C preprocessor for some Sage packages, and similarly, using it is likely quite
risky. If GCC is installed within Sage, CPP is ignored and Sage’s cpp is used instead.
• CXX - similarly, this will set the C++ compiler for some Sage packages, and similarly, using it is likely quite
risky. If GCC is installed within Sage, CXX is ignored and Sage’s g++ is used instead.

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• FC - similarly, this will set the Fortran compiler. This is supported by all Sage packages which have Fortran
code. However, for historical reasons, the value is hardcoded during the initial make and subsequent changes to
$FC might be ignored (in which case, the original value will be used instead). If GCC is installed within Sage,
FC is ignored and Sage’s gfortran is used instead.
• CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and FCFLAGS - the flags for the C compiler, the C++ compiler and the Fortran compiler,
respectively. The same comments apply to these: setting them may cause problems, because they are not
universally respected among the Sage packages. Note also that export CFLAGS="" does not have the same
effect as unset CFLAGS. The latter is preferable.
• Similar comments apply to other compiler and linker flags like CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS, CXXFLAG64,
LDFLAG64, and LD.
• OPENBLAS_CONFIGURE - adds additional configuration flags for the OpenBLAS package that gets added to
the make command. (see trac ticket #23272)
Sage uses the following environment variables when it runs:
• DOT_SAGE - this is the directory, to which the user has read and write access, where Sage stores a number of
files. The default location is $HOME/.sage/.
• SAGE_STARTUP_FILE - a file including commands to be executed every time Sage starts. The default value
is $DOT_SAGE/init.sage.
• BROWSER - on most platforms, Sage will detect the command to run a web browser, but if this doesn’t seem to
work on your machine, set this variable to the appropriate command.
Variables dealing with doctesting:
• SAGE_TIMEOUT - used for Sage’s doctesting: the number of seconds to allow a doctest before timing it out. If
this isn’t set, the default is 300 seconds (5 minutes).
• SAGE_TIMEOUT_LONG - used for Sage’s doctesting: the number of seconds to allow a doctest before timing
it out, if tests are run using sage -t --long. If this isn’t set, the default is 1800 seconds (30 minutes).
• SAGE_TEST_GLOBAL_ITER, SAGE_TEST_ITER: these can be used instead of passing the flags
--global-iterations and --file-iterations, respectively, to sage -t. Indeed, these variables
are only used if the flags are unset. Run sage -t -h for more information on the effects of these flags (and
therefore these variables).
Sage sets some other environment variables. The most accurate way to see what Sage does is to first run env from
a shell prompt to see what environment variables you have set. Then run sage --sh -c env to see the list after
Sage sets its variables. (This runs a separate shell, executes the shell command env, and then exits that shell, so after
running this, your settings will be restored.) Alternatively, you can peruse the shell script src/bin/sage-env.
Sage also has some environment-like settings. Some of these correspond to actual environment variables while others
have names like environment variables but are only available while Sage is running. To see a list, execute sage.
env.[TAB] while running Sage.

4.7 Installation in a Multiuser Environment

This section addresses the question of how a system administrator can install a single copy of Sage in a multi-user
computer network.

4.7.1 System-wide install

In the instructions below, we assume that /path/to/sage-x.y is the directory where you want to install Sage.

4.7. Installation in a Multiuser Environment 25

Sage Installation Guide, Release 9.0

1. First of all, extract the Sage source tarball in /path/to (this will create the directory /path/to/sage-x.
y). After extracting, you can change the directory name if you do not like sage-x.y.
2. Change the ownership of the /path/to/sage-x.y directory tree to your normal user account (as opposed
to root). This is because Sage will refuse to compile as root.

$ chown -R user:group /path/to/sage-x.y

3. Using your normal user account, build Sage. See the Step-by-step installation procedure above.
4. Make a symbolic link to the sage script in /usr/local/bin:

$ ln -s /path/to/sage-x.y/sage /usr/local/bin/sage

Alternatively, copy the Sage script:

$ cp /path/to/sage-x.y/sage /usr/local/bin/sage

If you do this, make sure you edit the line:

#SAGE_ROOT=/path/to/sage-version

at the beginning of the copied sage script according to the direction given there to something like:

SAGE_ROOT=<SAGE_ROOT>

(note that you have to change <SAGE_ROOT> above!). It is recommended not to edit the original sage script,
only the copy at /usr/local/bin/sage.
5. Optionally, you can test Sage by running:

$ make testlong

or make ptestlong which tests files in parallel using multiple processes. You can also omit long to skip
tests which take a long time.
This page was last updated in August 2019 (Sage 9.0).

26 Chapter 4. Install from Source Code

 CHAPTER

FIVE

LAUNCHING SAGEMATH

Now we assume that you installed SageMath properly on your system. This section quickly explains how to start the
Sage console and the Jupyter Notebook from the command line.
If you did install the Windows version or the macOS application you should have icons available on your desktops
or launching menus. Otherwise you are strongly advised to create shortcuts for Sage as indicated as the end of the
“Linux” Section in Install from Pre-built Binaries. Assuming that you have this shortcut, running sage in a console
starts a Sage session. To quit the session enter quit and then press <Enter>. To start a Jupyter Notebook instead
of a Sage console, run the command sage -n jupyter instead of just sage. To quit the Jupyter Notebook press
<Ctrl> + <c> twice in the console where you launched the command.
For further reading you can have a look at the other documents in the SageMath documentation at http://doc.sagemath.
org/.

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28 Chapter 5. Launching SageMath

 CHAPTER

SIX

STANDARD PACKAGES

The Sage distribution includes most programs on which Sage depends – see a partial list below. These programs are
all released under a license compatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 3. See the COPYING.txt
file in the Sage root directory for more details.
See Listing Sage Packages for information about installing packages and for an up-to-date list of the standard, optional
and experimental packages.
Here is a list of some of the software included with Sage:
• atlas: The ATLAS (Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra Software) project
• bzip2: bzip2 compression library
• ecl: common lisp interpreter
• cython: the Cython programming language: a language, based on Pyrex, for easily writing C extensions for
Python
• eclib: John Cremona’s programs for enumerating and computing with elliptic curves defined over the rational
numbers
• ecm: elliptic curve method for integer factorization
• flint: fast library for number theory
• GAP: A System for Computational Discrete Algebra
• GCC: GNU compiler collection containing C, C++ and Fortran compilers
• genus2reduction: Reduction information about genus 2 curves
• gfan: Computation of Groebner fans and toric varieties
• givaro: a C++ library for arithmetic and algebraic computations
• mpir: MPIR is an open source multiprecision integer library derived from GMP (the GNU multiprecision li-
brary)
• gsl: GNU Scientific Library is a numerical library for C and C++ programmers
• ipython: An enhanced Python shell designed for efficient interactive work, a library to build customized inter-
active environments using Python as the basic language, and a system for interactive distributed and parallel
computing
• jmol: a Java molecular viewer for three-dimensional chemical structures
• lapack: a library of Fortran 77 subroutines for solving the most commonly occurring problems in numerical
linear algebra.
• lcalc: Rubinstein’s L-functions calculator

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• fplll: contains different implementations of the floating-point LLL reduction algorithm, offering different
speed/guarantees ratios
• linbox: C++ template library for exact, high-performance linear algebra computation
• m4ri: Library for matrix multiplication, reduction and inversion over GF(2)
• mathjax: Javascript display engine for mathematics
• matplotlib: a Python 2-D plotting library
• maxima: symbolic algebra and calculus
• mpfi: a C library for arithmetic by multi-precision intervals, based on MPFR and GMP
• mpfr: a C library for multiple-precision floating-point computations with correct rounding
• networkx: a Python package for the creation, manipulation, and study of the structure, dynamics, and functions
of complex networks
• NTL: number theory C++ library
• numpy: numerical linear algebra and other numerical computing capabilities for Python
• palp: a package for analyzing lattice polytopes
• pari: PARI number theory library
• pexpect: Python expect (for remote control of other systems)
• polybori: provide high-level data types for Boolean polynomials and monomials, exponent vectors, as well as
for the underlying polynomial rings and subsets of the power set of the Boolean variables
• PPL: The Parma Polyhedra Library
• pynac: a modified version of GiNaC (a C++ library for symbolic mathematical calculations) that replaces the
dependency on CLN by Python
• Python: The Python programming language
• R: a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics
• readline: GNU Readline line editor library
• scipy: scientific tools for Python
• singular: Polynomial computations in algebraic geometry, etc.
• symmetrica: routines for computing in the representation theory of classical and symmetric groups, and related
areas
• sympow: Symmetric power L-functions and modular degrees
• sympy: a Python library for symbolic mathematics
• tachyon: Tachyon(tm) parallel/multiprocessor ray tracing software
• termcap: Display terminal library
• Twisted: Networking framework
• zlib: zlib compression library
• zn_poly: C library for polynomial arithmetic in Z/𝑛Z[𝑥]

Todo: Automatically generate this list!

30 Chapter 6. Standard packages

 CHAPTER

SEVEN

TROUBLESHOOTING

If no binary version is available for your system, you can fallback to the Install from Source Code or use one of the
alternatives proposed at the end of Welcome to the SageMath Installation Guide.
If you have any trouble, have a look at the FAQ wiki page, the SageMath forum or the sage-support mailing list.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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32 Chapter 7. Troubleshooting
 INDEX

B
BROWSER, 25

C
CC, 24
CFLAGS, 25
CPP, 24
CPPFLAGS, 25
CXX, 24
CXXFLAG64, 25
CXXFLAGS, 25
CYGWIN_ROOT, 19

D
DOT_SAGE, 25

E
environment variable
BROWSER, 25
CC, 24
CFLAGS, 25
CPP, 24
CPPFLAGS, 25
CXX, 24
CXXFLAG64, 25
CXXFLAGS, 25
CYGWIN_ROOT, 19
DOT_SAGE, 25
FC, 25
FCFLAGS, 25
HOME, 15
LD, 25
LDFLAG64, 25
LDFLAGS, 25
MAKE, 20, 21
MAKEFLAGS, 21
OPENBLAS_CONFIGURE, 25

33
Sage Installation Guide, Release 9.0

PARI_CONFIGURE, 24
PARI_MAKEFLAGS, 24
PATH, 13, 17, 18
SAGE_ATLAS_ARCH, 23
SAGE_ATLAS_LIB, 23, 24
SAGE_BUILD_DIR, 22
SAGE_CHECK, 21
SAGE_CHECK_PACKAGES, 21
SAGE_DEBUG, 22
SAGE_DOC_MATHJAX, 22
SAGE_DOCBUILD_OPTS, 22
SAGE_FAT_BINARY, 23
SAGE_INSTALL_CCACHE, 21
SAGE_INSTALL_GCC, 21
SAGE_KEEP_BUILT_SPKGS, 22, 23
SAGE_LOCAL, 16, 23
SAGE_MATPLOTLIB_GUI, 24
SAGE_MP_LIBRARY, 23
SAGE_NUM_THREADS, 21
SAGE_PORT, 23
SAGE_PROFILE, 22
SAGE_ROOT, 16, 19
SAGE_SERVER, 20
SAGE_SPKG_INSTALL_DOCS, 22
SAGE_STARTUP_FILE, 25
SAGE_SUDO, 23
SAGE_TEST_GLOBAL_ITER, 25
SAGE_TEST_ITER, 25
SAGE_TIMEOUT, 25
SAGE_TIMEOUT_LONG, 25
SAGE_TUNE_PARI, 24
V, 21

F
FC, 25
FCFLAGS, 25

H
HOME, 15

L
LD, 25
LDFLAG64, 25
LDFLAGS, 25

M
MAKE, 20, 21
MAKEFLAGS, 21

O
OPENBLAS_CONFIGURE, 25

34 Index
 Sage Installation Guide, Release 9.0

P
PARI_CONFIGURE, 24
PARI_MAKEFLAGS, 24
PATH, 13, 17, 18

S
SAGE_ATLAS_ARCH, 23
SAGE_ATLAS_LIB, 23, 24
SAGE_BUILD_DIR, 22
SAGE_CHECK, 21
SAGE_CHECK_PACKAGES, 21
SAGE_DEBUG, 22
SAGE_DOC_MATHJAX, 22
SAGE_DOCBUILD_OPTS, 22
SAGE_FAT_BINARY, 23
SAGE_INSTALL_CCACHE, 21
SAGE_INSTALL_GCC, 21
SAGE_KEEP_BUILT_SPKGS, 22, 23
SAGE_LOCAL, 16, 23
SAGE_MATPLOTLIB_GUI, 24
SAGE_MP_LIBRARY, 23
SAGE_NUM_THREADS, 21
SAGE_PORT, 23
SAGE_PROFILE, 22
SAGE_ROOT, 16, 19
SAGE_SERVER, 20
SAGE_SPKG_INSTALL_DOCS, 22
SAGE_STARTUP_FILE, 25
SAGE_SUDO, 23
SAGE_TEST_GLOBAL_ITER, 25
SAGE_TEST_ITER, 25
SAGE_TIMEOUT, 25
SAGE_TIMEOUT_LONG, 25
SAGE_TUNE_PARI, 24

V
V, 21

Index 35