Neha Patil (Editor)

SageMath

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Written in
  
Python, Cython

SageMath

Initial release
  
24 February 2005; 12 years ago (2005-02-24)

Stable release
  
7.6 / 25 March 2017; 1 day ago (2017-03-25)

Preview release
  
7.6.rc2 / 19 March 2017; 7 days ago (2017-03-19)

Repository
  
git.sagemath.org/sage.git/

Operating system
  
Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, Solaris, iOS, Android

SageMath (previously Sage or SAGE, "System for Algebra and Geometry Experimentation") is mathematical software with features covering many aspects of mathematics, including algebra, combinatorics, numerical mathematics, number theory, and calculus.

Contents

The first version of SageMath was released on 24 February 2005 as free and open source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2, with the initial goals of creating an "open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and MATLAB". The originator and leader of the SageMath project, William Stein, is a mathematician at the University of Washington.

SageMath "uses a Python-like syntax," supporting procedural, functional and object-oriented constructs.

Features

Features of SageMath include:

  • A browser-based notebook for review and re-use of previous inputs and outputs, including graphics and text annotations. Compatible with Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Google Chrome and Safari. Notebooks can be accessed locally or remotely and the connection can be secured with HTTPS.
  • A text-based command-line interface using IPython
  • Support for parallel processing using multi-core processors, multiple processors, or distributed computing
  • Calculus using Maxima and SymPy
  • Numerical linear algebra using the GSL, SciPy and NumPy
  • Libraries of elementary and special mathematical functions
  • 2D and 3D graphs of symbolic functions and numerical data
  • Matrix manipulation, including sparse arrays
  • Multivariate statistics libraries, using R and SciPy
  • A toolkit for adding user interfaces to calculations and applications
  • Graph theory visualization and analysis tools
  • Libraries of number theory functions
  • Support for complex numbers, arbitrary precision and symbolic computation
  • Technical word processing including formula editing and embedding SageMath within LaTeX documents
  • The Python standard library, including tools for connecting to SQL, HTTP, HTTPS, NNTP, IMAP, SSH, IRC, FTP and others
  • Interfaces to some third-party applications like Mathematica, Magma, R, and Maple
  • MoinMoin as a Wiki system for knowledge management
  • Documentation using Sphinx
  • An automated test-suite
  • Execution of Fortran, C, C++, and Cython code
  • SageMath can pull up Mathematica within a program. Interfacing this way is documented officially to Sage.

    • Development

    William Stein realized when designing Sage that there were many open-source mathematics software packages already written in different languages, namely C, C++, Common Lisp, Fortran and Python.

    Rather than reinventing the wheel, Sage (which is written mostly in Python and Cython) integrates many specialized mathematics software packages into a common interface, for which a user needs to know only Python. However, Sage contains hundreds of thousands of unique lines of code adding new functions and creating the interface between its components.

    SageMath uses both students and professionals for development. The development of SageMath is supported by both volunteer work and grants. However, it was not until 2016 that the first full-time Sage developer was hired (funded by an EU grant). The same year, Stein described his disappointment with a lack of academic funding and credentials for software development, citing it as the reason for his decision to leave his tenured academic position to work full-time on the project in a newly founded company, SageMath, Inc.

    Release history

    Only the major releases are listed below. SageMath practices the "release early, release often" concept, with releases every few weeks or months. In total, there have been over 300 releases, although their frequency has decreased.

    Achievements

  • 2007: first prize in the scientific software division of Les Trophées du Libre, an international competition for free software.
  • 2012: one of the projects selected for the Google Summer of Code.
  • 2013: ACM/SIGSAM Jenks Prize.
  • SageMath has been cited in a variety of publications.

    • Performance

    Both binaries and source code are available for SageMath from the download page. If SageMath is built from source code, many of the included libraries such as ATLAS, FLINT, and NTL will be tuned and optimized for that computer, taking into account the number of processors, the size of their caches, whether there is hardware support for SSE instructions, etc.

    Cython can increase the speed of SageMath programs, as the Python code is converted into C.

    Licensing and availability

    SageMath is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3. SageMath is available in many ways:

  • The source code can be downloaded from the downloads page. Although not recommended for end users, development releases of SageMath are also available. Many Linux distributions also include SageMath in their repositories [see below].
  • Binaries can be downloaded for Linux, macOS and Solaris (both x86 and SPARC).
  • A live CD containing a bootable Linux operating system is also available. This allows usage of SageMath without Linux installation.
  • Users could have used an online version of SageMath at sagenb.org, but it has been discontinued in April 2015.
  • Users can use an online "single cell" version of SageMath at sagecell.sagemath.org or embed a single SageMath cell into any web page. Users can also create permalinks to SageMath computations using the cell server.
  • A new online SageMath notebook is available at cloud.sagemath.com.

    • Full documentation for installation is provided at doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/

    Although Microsoft was sponsoring a native version of SageMath for the Windows operating system, as of 2012 there were no plans for a native port, and users of Windows currently have to use virtualization technology such as VirtualBox to run SageMath. As of SageMath 5.9, it mostly successfully builds on Cygwin.

    Linux distributions in which SageMath is available as a package are Mandriva, Fedora, and Arch Linux. It is also available as a dedicated Ubuntu PPA. In Gentoo, it's available via layman in the "sage-on-gentoo" overlay. However, SageMath can be installed to any Linux distribution.

    Gentoo prefix also provides Sage on other operating systems.

    Software packages contained in SageMath

    The philosophy of SageMath is to use existing open-source libraries wherever they exist. Therefore, it uses many libraries from other projects.

    References

    SageMath Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA