1.1 Installation

If you do not have Sage installed on a computer and just want to try some commands, use it online at http://sagecell.sagemath.org.

See the Sage Installation Guide in the documentation section of the main Sage webpage [SA] for instructions on installing Sage on your computer. Here we merely make a few comments.

1. The Sage download file comes with “batteries included”. In other words, although Sage uses Python, IPython, PARI, GAP, Singular, Maxima, NTL, GMP, and so on, you do not need to install them separately as they are included with the Sage distribution. However, to use certain Sage features, e.g., Macaulay or KASH, you must have the relevant programs installed on your computer already.

2. The pre-compiled binary version of Sage (found on the Sage web site) may be easier and quicker to install than the source code version. Just unpack the file and run sage.

3. If you’d like to use the SageTeX package (which allows you to embed the results of Sage computations into a LaTeX file), you will need to make SageTeX known to your TeX distribution. To do this, see the section “Make SageTeX known to TeX” in the Sage installation guide (this link should take you to a local copy of the installation guide). It’s quite easy; you just need to set an environment variable or copy a single file to a directory that TeX will search. The documentation for using SageTeX is located in $$SAGE\_ROOT/venv/share/texmf/tex/latex/sagetex/$$, where “$$SAGE\_ROOT$$” refers to the directory where you installed Sage – for example, $$/opt/sage-9.6$$.