SageMath 8.5 released

[Samuel Lelièvre]

News from SageMath, the Sage Mathematics Software System!

SageMath 8.5 was released on 2018-12-23.

SageMath, also known as Sage (website: http://sagemath.org/), is
developed mostly by volunteers, although in recent years several
developers have been paid to work full time or part time on Sage.

Sage combines over 150 free software packages, and includes over
a million lines of new Python code.

SageMath can be tried or used online via SageCell and CoCalc:

* SageCell: http://sagecell.sagemath.org/
* CoCalc: https://cocalc.com

Both have been updated to SageMath 8.5.

To install SageMath on a computer, one can use compiled versions
for most operating systems, including native installers for most
Linux distributions, for macOS, for Windows. Source files are also
available in order to compile Sage from source. For all downloads:

* http://www.sagemath.org/download.html

This announcement is sent a few days after the release so that
most versions will have made their way to the download mirrors.

SageMath is also available as a Docker image, and is packaged for
Arch Linux, Conda, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Homebrew, Nix, ...
The version available for your favourite package manager might
be listed at: https://repology.org/metapackage/sagemath/versions

A bootable USB called SageDebianLive, and a virtual machine
appliance called SageAppliance, are also available.

Sage-Windows has been updated to 8.5 and is making its way to
the download mirror. Sage Debian Live will take a little longer.

For more detail on the various ways Sage is distributed, see:

* https://wiki.sagemath.org/Distribution

For installation instructions, see

* http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/index.html

The SageMath plugin for TeXmacs was very recently updated, and
will let you use Sage from within TeXmacs.

* https://github.com/texmacs/SageMath.tm

The `sage-shell-mode` for Emacs lets you use Sage from Emacs:

* https://github.com/sagemath/sage-shell-mode

Please ask any questions and/or report any problems to Ask Sage,
our questions and answers forum, or to the sage-support mailing list.

* Ask Sage: https://ask.sagemath.org/
* sage-support: https://groups.google.com/group/sage-support

You can also drop by the #sagemath IRC channel on freenode.

Details about tickets closed and contributors for each release:

* http://www.sagemath.org/changelogs/

Release manager for this release: Volker Braun.

If you want to follow SageMath's development more closely,
development releases are available from the "download-latest" page;
they are announced and discussed on the sage-release mailing list;
for development discussion, check out the sage-devel mailing list.

* download-latest: https://www.sagemath.org/download-latest.html
* sage-release: https://groups.google.com/group/sage-release
* sage-devel: https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel