Installation

jFriCAS comprises three files which have to be installed:

Kernel spec:kernel.json Wrapper Kernel:fricaskernel.py Web service:webspad.lisp

The whole trick is to put these files into the right places.

Prerequisites

The only supported OS at the moment is GNU/Linux - Debian/Ubuntu.

We require a version of FriCAS which was compiled with a Common Lisp that supports multithreading and Hunchentoot. We recommend SBCL 1.4.5 or later.

See the FriCAS installation guide in order to install a FriCAS version that you can use with jFriCAS.

Since Python 2.7 is not maintained anymore, we require Python3. We recommend Python 3.6 or later. For instance:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install python3

Check via

$ python --version

whether your system’s python refer to version 3 or higher.

Pip3 is also required (recommended version 9.0.1 or later).

$ sudo apt install python3-pip

Install Jupyter system-wide via

$ sudo apt install jupyter

or under $HOME/.local via

$ pip3 install jupyter

It is hardly worth to mention, a web-browser is required as well. We strongly recommend the latest Firefox.

Install from PyPI

If the prerequisites are satisfied, installing jFriCAS from PyPI is as simple as calling

$ pip3 install jfricas

Note that jFriCAS 1.0.0 only works under a particular setup that we do not support anymore. Use version 2.0.0.

The kernel.json file will be installed automatically by the above command.

Install from GitHub

$ git clone https://github.com/fricas/jfricas.git
$ cd jfricas
$ pip3 install .

Install System-wide

Do the the installation command with sudo prefix.

$ sudo pip3 install jfricas

Note that sudo pip3 install --user jfricas is not supported.

Virtual environments

In case you do not want to clutter your $HOME/.local directory or you want to develop jFriCAS itself, it makes sense to install jFriCAS into a virtual environment.

Make sure you have the venv python module installed.

$ sudo apt install python3-venv

Now create a virtual environment and activate it.

$ V=$HOME/venv-jfricas
$ python -m venv $V
$ source $V/bin/activate

$ pip3 install wheel
$ pip3 install jupyter
$ pip3 install requests
$ pip3 install jfricas

Note that jupyter --paths still shows that the runtime path is under $HOME/.local.

Check installation

You should see jfricas among the output of

$ jupyter kernelspec list

Uninstall

The jFriCAS code can be removed by

$ pip3 uninstall jfricas

Additionally, you have to remove the jfricas kernelspec for Jupyter. Locate it via

$ jupyter kernelspec list

and remove it via

$ jupyter kernelspec remove jfricas

or by removing the respective directory.

Check requirements

The following sequence of commands show how to check the presence and (if present) the versions of the required programs:

fricas --version
     FriCAS a3c1d1dc5829126604345db3d672c2386d9296ae
     based on sbcl 2.1.11.debian

echo ")lisp (lisp-implementation-type)" | fricas -nosman
     Value = "SBCL", required: SBCL

echo ")lisp (lisp-implementation-version)" | fricas -nosman
     Value = "2.1.11.debian", required: >= 1.2.6

python3 --version
     Python 3.10.6, required: >= 3.3,

pip3 --version
     pip 22.0.2 from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip (python 3.10)

pip3 show requests
     Name: requests
     Version: 2.31.0
     Summary: Python HTTP for Humans.
     Home-page: Home-page: https://requests.readthedocs.io
Install: pip3 install requests

pip3 freeze             should show something like ...
     ipykernel==6.24.0
     ipython==8.14.0
     ipython-genutils==0.2.0
     ipywidgets==8.0.7
     jsonschema==4.18.0
     jsonschema-specifications==2023.6.1
     jupyter==1.0.0
     jupyter-console==6.6.3
     jupyter-contrib-core==0.4.2
     jupyter-contrib-nbextensions==0.7.0
     jupyter-events==0.6.3
     jupyter-highlight-selected-word==0.2.0
     jupyter-nbextensions-configurator==0.6.3
     jupyter_client==8.3.0
     jupyter_core==5.3.1
     jupyter_server==2.7.0
     jupyter_server_terminals==0.4.4
     jupyterlab-pygments==0.2.2
     jupyterlab-widgets==3.0.8
     jupytext==1.14.7
     ...

otherwise install jupyter with:
pip3 install jupyter

jupyter --version
     4.6.3
     Selected Jupyter core packages...
     IPython          : 8.14.0
     ipykernel        : 6.24.0
     ipywidgets       : 8.0.7
     jupyter_client   : 8.3.0
     jupyter_core     : 5.3.1
     jupyter_server   : 2.7.0
     jupyterlab       : not installed
     nbclient         : 0.8.0
     nbconvert        : 7.6.0
     nbformat         : 5.9.0
     notebook         : 6.5.4
     qtconsole        : 5.4.3
     traitlets        : 5.9.0

cat /etc/os-release

PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION_ID="22.04"
VERSION="22.04.2 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)"
VERSION_CODENAME=jammy
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
UBUNTU_CODENAME=jammy

References