building Sage

[John Cremona]

I have been building Sage on linux computers for 20 years. I
currently have a working 10.9.beta0 on my laptop but also need to keep
working versions (not development versions) on other ubuntu machines.
I have never in my life knowingly used conda and I don't know what it
is. BUT the installation guides tell me that I should install conda
-- both for installing a development version and for a non-development
version.

This cannot be necessary as I have never used or installed conda, and
I have built version 10.9.beta0.

Please can someone confirm that it is still OK to clone the latest
version (let's say, the latest release), do ./bootstrap and
./configure and make? Followed by (e.g.) make
database_cremona_ellcurve?

John

[Dima Pasechnik]

I'm sure you are misreading the documentation.

The installation guide has tabs to choose the platform and the OS, and it refers to the development guide for installation from source.

[Martin R]

I see the following on https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/developer/walkthrough.html

------------------------------------------

Development Walk-through

This section is a concise overview of the Sage development process. We will see how to make changes to the Sage source code and record them in the Git revision control system.

Quick start

If you are in a hurry, you can skip the details and just follow these steps:

1. Install Git (see Installing Git) and Conda.

------------------------------------------

is this the wrong page?

Martin

[Dima Pasechnik]

"classical" (sage-distro) install is described in
https://github.com/sagemath/sage/blob/develop/README.md
(not sure why the developer workthrough got so Conda-centric, but at
least this is
certainly a quick way to get something running)

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[Dima Pasechnik]

<https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/source-distro.html>

[John Cremona]

Thanks (as always) Dima.   There do seem to be more than one place where installation instructions can be found.   I thought I was being a good citizen by actually reading the version  I found instead of relying on my past experience.

Most of the build worked fine (but see below) after ./bootstrap && ./configure (after which "make configure" reports that 'configure' is up to date).

I found that on a system running ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS the package qhull fails to build as it want cmake version 3.25 or higher while this system only has 3.22.1 available.  I wonder if the later version is really necessary.  I am hesitant to upgrade the OS as I do not have physical access to the machine without a lot of hassle: it is in a central university server room, and we don't like to remind the relevant authorities that they still house some of our servers.  It is also 13 years old but still rather useful even if it still only has sage version 10.6 on it.

John 

[John Cremona]

PS I seem to have got round the qhull issue by installing ubuntu packages libqhull-dev and qhull-bin which I had not installed previously.

[Eric Gourgoulhon]

Hi John, 

Since you are using Ubuntu, you may find this page useful:

https://sagemanifolds.obspm.fr/install_ubuntu.html

I'm trying to maintain it up to date, in order to provide Ubuntu new comers to Sage with a quick way to install Sage. In particular the list of system packages in the "sudo apt install" line is up to date. Last time I checked the list posted at

https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/source-distro.html#linux-system-package-installation

it was not the case: the command "sudo apt-get install" was failing with Ubuntu 24.04 because of some wrong package names , which is quite disturbing for a new comer. I've tried to edit the doc.sagemath.org page to fix that, but the list is automatically generated and I could not find quickly how to change it by editing some source file. 

Eric.

[Dima Pasechnik]

On January 21, 2026 4:08:42 AM CST, Eric Gourgoulhon <egourg...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi John,
>
>Since you are using Ubuntu, you may find this page useful:
>https://sagemanifolds.obspm.fr/install_ubuntu.html
>I'm trying to maintain it up to date, in order to provide Ubuntu new comers
>to Sage with a quick way to install Sage. In particular the list of system
>packages in the "sudo apt install" line is up to date. Last time I checked
>the list posted at
>https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/source-distro.html#linux-system-package-installation
>it was not the case: the command "sudo apt-get install" was failing with
>Ubuntu 24.04 because of some wrong package names , which is quite
>disturbing for a new comer. I've tried to edit the doc.sagemath.org page to
>fix that, but the list is automatically generated and I could not find
>quickly how to change it by editing some source file.

package lists are generated from
build/pkgs/*/distros/*.txt

(for Debian/Ubuntu the 2nd * should be "debian")

please open a PR to fix these names

>>>> 1.
>>>>
>>>> Install Git (see Installing Git
>>>> <https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/developer/git_setup.html#section-git-install>)
>>>> and Conda
>>>> <https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge?tab=readme-ov-file#install>
>>>> .

[Dima Pasechnik]

Please see https://github.com/sagemath/sage/pull/41527 for a shot at clarification of these instructions.

[Eric Gourgoulhon]

Le mercredi 21 janvier 2026 à 15:39:33 UTC+1, dim...@gmail.com a écrit :

On January 21, 2026 4:08:42 AM CST, Eric Gourgoulhon <egourg...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi John,
>
>Since you are using Ubuntu, you may find this page useful:
>https://sagemanifolds.obspm.fr/install_ubuntu.html
>I'm trying to maintain it up to date, in order to provide Ubuntu new comers
>to Sage with a quick way to install Sage. In particular the list of system
>packages in the "sudo apt install" line is up to date. Last time I checked
>the list posted at
>https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/source-distro.html#linux-system-package-installation
>it was not the case: the command "sudo apt-get install" was failing with
>Ubuntu 24.04 because of some wrong package names , which is quite
>disturbing for a new comer. I've tried to edit the doc.sagemath.org page to
>fix that, but the list is automatically generated and I could not find
>quickly how to change it by editing some source file.

package lists are generated from
build/pkgs/*/distros/*.txt

(for Debian/Ubuntu the 2nd * should be "debian")

please open a PR to fix these names

Thank you for these tips! 

I'll prepare a PR in a few days (too  busy at the moment). 

Eric.