CoCoA » CoCoA-5

The instructions should tell the user what to do with the file cocoa-XYZ.tgz.

Where should it be saved (or moved to)? [personal installation, system-wide installation]
How should it be unpacked? (sufficient to run tar xf cocoa-XYZ.tgz)
Any install scripts which should be run (e.g. for updating the .emacs file)

Not all linux users are knowledgeable about tar etc.

Adding a comment from John:

Some points to clarify on the website:

what to download and do for a completely new installation (CoCoA+emacs)
    ditto for the GUI
    what to do to upgrade an existing installation (emacs/GUI -- 2 cases)
    what to do to upgrade emacs

I wonder if we can make a "tarball" containing both CoCoA and emacs: technically it should be not be too hard, might there be some legal problem?

John Abbott wrote:

The problem was that he had unpacked the zip file in c:\, which created a directory with a name like cocoa-5.2.5-microsoft-text/.
It was not obvious that one should move the subdirectory cocoa-5.2 from inside to c:\. We should make this clearer!

I thought it was clear. I have improved it .... now testing on my students ;-)

Actually this issue was about helping "install" the CoCoA executable on LINUX.

Probably we should handle two cases: user is a "sudoer", and user is not.

Also there should probably be a few hints about installing "emacs" (via a package manager).

For a normal user (inexperienced, not sudoer):

(1)  Create a directory where you would like to keep all files related to the CoCoA-5 system
     (we recommend that you do not put any other files in this directory).  For example,
     to make a suitable directory in your "home" type the following:
       cd
       mkdir CoCoA-5

(2)  Download the distribution file -- it will have a name like cocoa-5.3.0-linux.tgz.
     And move this file into the directory you created in step (1); you can use drag-and-drop
     or a shell command like
       mv ~/Downloads/cocoa-5.3.0-linux.tgz  ~/CoCoA-5

(3)  Unpack the TGZ file: double-click may work, or else use these commands
       cd ~/CoCoA-5 
       tar xzf cocoa-5.3.0-linux.tgz

(4)  If you plan to use the Emacs interface (recommended) then immediately after the steps in (3) do
        cd emacs
        ./ConfigureEmacs.sh

(5)  If you do not already have Emacs installed then ask you computer administrator to install it for you
     (it should be freely available as a linux package).

What should an experienced sudoer do?
Do we have a reasonable suggestion for making a system-wide installation?

Someone (Abdelali ABOUHALI) recently (2020-05-11) asked for guidance installing CoCoA on Ubuntu.

This is what I answered.

From the CoCoA website you should download the file  cocoa-5.3.2-linux.tgz

Assuming you used a browser, the file will probably have been placed in a
directory for downloaded file (on my computer it is ~/Downloads).

It is probably a good idea to create a special directory into which
the CoCoA executable (and other support files) will be stored:
  cd
  mkdir CoCoA
The above "shell" commands will create a directory called CoCoA in your home.
The next commands will unpack CoCoA into that directory:
  cd  ~/CoCoA
  mv ~/Downloads/cocoa-5.3.2-linux.tgz  .
  tar xzf cocoa-5.3.2-linux.tgz
  cd cocoa-5.3/emacs
  ./ConfigEmacs.sh

These instruction will make a "personal" installation on your linux computer.
It is also possible to make a "system-wide" installation (in which case you should
already know enough to know what to do).

Last week a student came with some problems with making CoCoA work on her MacBook; most of these are dealt with elsewhere.

One problem she had was that Emacs recognized that her system language was czech, so it adapted itself to the czech keyboard. This meant that some useful characters (such as square brackets) were difficult to type in. The solution was to tell emacs to make it easier: namely, she opened the menu "Options" and found somewhere "Option for composed characters" (which she activated), then it was easier to type in square brackets.
[I have no idea how she found out what to do inside emacs]

Perhaps we should give a hint about this in the instructions for MacOS?

I would still like o see more helpful guidance for linux users; not all linux users are experts.

How can one unpack a TGZ file? Probably double-clicking using a file manager will work.
Or else we should mention the CLI command tar xzf cocoa-5.3.4.tgz
(since not everyone will be familiar with tar).