Help & Community

GAP is developed and supported by volunteers, most of whom do this in addition to their regular job. This page explains where to ask which question, and who will see what you write there.

Please do not write to individual developers directly. The channels below reach more people who can answer, and a public answer helps the next person with the same question.

Before you ask

  • Manuals. The Tutorial and the Reference Manual describe GAP; each package has its own manual. Inside GAP, ? followed by a topic, e.g. ?Sylow, looks it up in the manuals.
  • FAQ and Learning GAP.
  • Web search. Many questions have been answered before, in the Forum archive, on Mathematics Stack Exchange or on MathOverflow.
  • AI assistants can help, but they often invent GAP functions or options that do not exist, and produce code that looks right but computes something else. Look up every function they use in the manual and test the code. If you post AI-generated code in one of the channels below, say so.

Where to ask

I want to … Where
ask how to do something with GAP GAP Forum, Slack, GitHub Discussions
ask a theoretical question about groups Group-Pub-Forum
report a bug in GAP GAP issue tracker; see Reporting issues
report a bug in a package Reporting issues
ask something that concerns only me, or is private GAP Support
discuss the development of GAP or a package GAP development list, GitHub, Slack, GAP Days
submit a package for distribution with GAP GAP development list; see Submitting a Package
hear about new releases and serious bugs GAP Forum, GAP development list, Slack
meet developers and work on code together GAP Days

Channels compared

Channel Who can post Who can read it Good for Not for
GAP Forum subscribers anyone: public archive since 1992 questions and discussions of general interest; announcements problems specific to your setup
GAP development list subscribers; others after moderation subscribers, mostly developers development of GAP and packages; package submissions usage questions
GAP Support anyone the Support Group only private or local problems; bug reports by email questions of general interest
GAP issue tracker GitHub users anyone bug reports and feature requests for GAP usage questions
package issue trackers depends on the package; mostly GitHub users anyone, usually bugs in a package bugs in GAP itself
GitHub Discussions GitHub users anyone questions, ideas, showing your work bug reports
Slack anyone who joins members; older messages may disappear quick questions; chat about development anything that should be findable later

The Group-Pub-Forum is a mailing list for questions on the theory of groups and related structures, run by the University of Bath. To join, email the address given on its page with your name and affiliation.

Math Stack Exchange and, for research-level questions, MathOverflow accept mathematical questions that involve GAP, but not questions that are only about how to use GAP.

How the GAP team uses these channels

  • New releases are announced on the GAP Forum, the GAP development list, and Slack.
  • Bugs that can produce wrong results without an error are announced on the GAP Forum.
  • Bug reports are best filed in the issue tracker; reports sent to any of the three mailing lists reach us too.
  • Development is discussed in GitHub issues and pull requests, on the development list, and on Slack.

GAP Days

GAP Days are week-long meetings of GAP developers and users, held about twice a year at changing places. Each meeting has a few main topics, coding sprints, and short talks about recent developments. Users with some programming experience are welcome, not only core developers: with many GAP experts in the room, it is a good opportunity to work on your own package or code, and to influence where GAP goes next. Upcoming meetings are listed on the front page and at gapdays.de.

Feedback and contributions