Packages refresh#4408
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d-torrance
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M2@GT26
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A number of conflicts to fix. (Sorry -- like half of them are me updating my email address!)
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I should note: All references in the Macaulay2 documentation and on the wiki for package writing still need to be updated to reflect these changes. |
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There are a few newer packages in development that haven't gotten the changes, e.g:
../../../../../Macaulay2/m2/option.m2:17:26:(1):[67]: error: encountered an unknown key or option: Date
../../../../../Macaulay2/packages/EuclideanDistanceDegree.m2:1:10:(2):[66]: --back trace--
| CacheExampleOutput => null, | ||
| Certification => null, | ||
| Configuration => {}, | ||
| Date => null, |
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Removing the key Date would cause all existing packages out there to produce an error when loaded. I'm also leaning against this change in general though because I prefer simple key names, but with clear documentation of what they should contain elsewhere.
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The same for Nevermind, you're not removing it so it's not gonna cause errors. I like Keywords, actually.Areas.
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You probably didn't mean to include this.
| InfoDirSection => "Macaulay2 and its packages", | ||
| Keywords => {}, | ||
| Maintainer => null, | ||
| MathematicsSubjectClassification => {}, |
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Instead of adding both MathematicsSubjectClassification and ComputingClassificationSystem, how about adding a unifying SubjectClass key and adding functions like MSC(ZZ,List) and CSS(ZZ,List) or similar? e.g. SubjectClass => {MSC(2020,{"13D02","14M25"}, ACM(...)}.
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This is ok if we're leaving MSC as optional. If we want to make it compulsory (which I think is a good idea - this would be a good thing to be able to search by when we have the package table online) then I wouldn't put them on the same footing. Is there a large group of users who would prefer the ACM classification? (this was mentioned in passing in the summary session, but not discussed).
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(This is from the ideas discussed in the Packages group (@seangrate, @dmaclagan, @wilvalin, and @foschreyer) at the M2@GT 2026 workshop)
This pull request comprises two main changes to the package infrastructure:
newPackagehave some additions and changes:Dateis nowLastUpdatedto make its purpose clearer (original release date versus date of version release)Maintaineroption to ensure packages have a designated person in charge of maintenance, especially needed whenever a package's authors are, for instance, no longer in academia.MaintainerandAuthorsnow haveOrcidas an available field which takes in the Orcid as a stringKeywordsoption has changed meaningAreasreplaces the originalKeywordsintention; e.g.,Areas = {"Combinatorics"}Keywordsis now intended for more fine-grained identifiers like "Betti numbers" or "toric varieties" (think arXiv keywords)MathematicsSubjectClassificationfor the AMS Mathematics Subject ClassificationComputingClassificationSystemfor the ACM Computing Classification SystemAbstractoption has been added. This is intended for a future feature for better package browsing.Here is an example using the new options:
All existing packages have had their
newPackageheader changed to comply with these revisions.