HPC GAP TODO

Things that need to be done in HPC-GAP. See also: List of open issues with HPC-GAP label

Unification with GAP

• complete kernel unification: issue #1216
• complete library unification: see HPC-GAP library unification TODO

See also:

• Related GitHub issues and pull requests
• Unifying GAP4 and HPC-GAP

Usability

• add readline support (see issue #467)
• add color prompt (see issue #39)
• fix copy&paste in terminal (see issue #1474]
• stable and highly usable single-threaded mode:
  • [ ]reduce the performance difference in single threaded mode; right now HPC-GAP is slower than GAP in that mode; one major factor that supposedly is Boehm GC (for details, talk to Reimer, or also to Chris, Markus, Max)
  • fix usage issues caused by e.g. things being in different regions, even though the user really only uses a single thread
• make it trivial to compile kernel extensions against HPC-GAP, e.g. from the io package (right now, one needs to set custom CPPFLAGS, otherwise headers for Boehm GC and libatomic_ops are not found; might also be a problem for GMP headers, if GAP built its own GMP)
• ...

Backporting code to GAP

Some code in HPC-GAP could be of interest for "plain" GAP, too, and we should investigate backporting it. That includes adding tests and documentation.

• Object sets and maps: src/objset.c. src/objset.h. lib/objset.g
• Serialization code: src/hpc/serialize.c, src/hpc/serialize.h
• Object traversal code: src/hpc/traverse.c, src/hpc/traverse.h
• Boehm Garbage collector: optionally allow compiling GAP with Boehm GC instead of GASMAN (this would help us to understand and improve/reduce the negative impact of Boehm GC on performance in HPC-GAP, as it would be isolated from any threading related performance issues)

Improve accessibility of new features

• Improve documentation for users
  • verify description of new features, make sure it is correct and up-to-date, and helpful
  • add tons of examples
  • Add some HPC tutorials which show with somewhat non-trivial examples how to use various features together.
• Improve documentation for package authors
  • e.g. provide instructions and help for "porting" packages to HPC-GAP
• Improve documentation for library & kernel developers
  • e.g. instructions on how to integrate ward into build system for C kernel extensions...
  • ... and perhaps also some guidelines for packages with C++ kernel extensions (which ward doesn't support)

Miscellaneous

• Some related (though possibly outdated or obsolete) references:
  • Unifying GAP4 and HPC-GAP
  • HPC-GAP Plan for migration
  • Status of Packages under HPC-GAP
  • HPC-GAP test failures
• Document various global #defines like HPCGAP and WARD_ENABLED in a prominent place
• Allow using system wide versions of Boehm GC and libatomic ops (see issue #1446)
• Figure out what to do with the MPI code that HPC-GAP brought along (based on ParGAP); see also the relevant pull requests and discussion on the GAP mailing list
• Adapt packages ...
  • ... to at least load and be usable in single-threaded HPC-GAP ...
  • ... to work in multi-threaded HPC-GAP ...
  • ... to take advantage of multi-threaded HPC-GAP
• ...