Errors when working over non-prime finite fields in MacOS with the package from 3-manifolds

[Rodrigo San José Rubio]

Hello, the following gives an error with the Sage package from the 3-manifolds project (both in 10.7 and 10.8 beta).:

C = codes.random_linear_code(GF(9), 10, 5)
C.minimum_distance()

NotImplementedError: conversion of (Givaro) finite field element to GAP not implemented except for fields defined by Conway polynomials.

I also got some unexpected outputs when working with linear codes, and I suspect there is something wrong when Sage is calling GAP. The details can be found in https://github.com/3-manifolds/Sage_macOS/issues/88.

This may be just caused by the package itself, and not by Sage, but I am posting it here in case anyone has an idea of what may be happening.