Re: PARI/GP for Windows running in 'Ubuntu for Windows' bash shell

[Bill Allombert <Bill.Allombert@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

On Wed, May 03, 2017 at 10:32:28PM +0200, Famille Raulin-Foissac wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> Since Windows 10 Microsoft provides the beta capability to run unmodified
> Linux binaries directly under Windows (see
> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about for more information
> and proper setup procedure) !
> 
> As proposed by Bill I just made a test, first with the "official" package
> from Ubuntu :
> 
>   sudo apt-get install pari-gp
> 
> will download and install version 2.7.5.

Thanks a lot!

> It seems to work pretty well and for the first time on Windows parallel GP
> provides the proper level of performance.

...which is a bit incredible, since apparently they do not use the Linux
kernel but reimplemented the linux ABI  including fast thread local
storage, something they did not quite achieve with win64 (though maybe
this is fixed in windows 10).

> After complete recompilation of GMP 6.1.2 (which went without any issue) I
> was able to recompile GP version 2.9.2 :
> 
>   ./Configure --mt=pthread --time=ftime --with-gmp=/usr/local -static
> 
> It's important to build and install a static version as the dynamic one is
> far slower.

The ubuntu binary is the static version for this reason
(the dynamic version is slower on ubuntu too).

A more recent ubuntu package is available here:
<https://packages.debian.org/jessie-backports/pari-gp>
Hopefully it works on windows.

> For the issue with umlauts and diacritical signs could you give me a test
> procedure so that I can check the actual behavior ?

I am not sure.
Try to type and execute
print("déjà vu")

But it will probably work.
Why ? because the underlying issue is not in GP but in the underlying
windows terminal which is not ANSI compatible.

I expect that in order for WSL to work correctly, they have added a
fully ANSI compatible terminal to run bash in, otherwise non modified
ubuntu binaries would not be able to speak to it.

The conclusion of all this is that for Windows 10 users, running GP
under WSL might give a better experience and performance than using the
native binary.

Thanks again for having experimented with this,
Cheers,
Bill.