Monitor version of flint

[olexandr-konovalov]

flint is needed for Singular. At the moment we use https://github.com/wbhart/flint2.git - when the new release happen, it will be more reliable to use that. See #9 for further comments.

[fingolfin]

Sadly, a new release might never happen.

In the meantime, always using the latest HEAD of flint is a serious issue, IMHO: It means that a build of this docker may fail at any time, if that HEAD is "bad" or simply contains incompatible changes. It also means that building this Dockerfile at two different times results in different code being run, defeating one of the major advantages of using Docker in the first place.

I would therefore strongly recommend to pick a known "good" revision of flint, and explicitly fetch that, instead of the latest master. Unfortunately, I don't know such a "good" revision, as at least the current one doesn't seem to be "good". Perhaps @alex-konovalov or @sebasguts have build artifacts around or know of some other means to extract a "good" version from past successful builds?

[olexandr-konovalov]

The one which is in the current gap-docker-base container (updated 9 month ago) is known to be good (since we did not experience any problems with it over that time). One could get into the container and figure out what is the latest commit there.

[fingolfin]

FLINT 2.6.3 was released a few months ago, and we should absolutely switch to that.

[olexandr-konovalov]

@fingolfin good news! Is it needed for Singular - should that one be upgraded as well? Are there any version dependencies?

[fingolfin]

Both Flint and Singular had a bunch of releases recently. They ideally should all be updated. But I think we should also strongly consider moving this Dockerfile to the gap-system/gap repo...

[olexandr-konovalov]

@fingolfin but why to move it?

[olexandr-konovalov]

https://www.flintlib.org/ now offers version 2.7.1 of 2021-01-18 - one should be now getting proper releases from that site.

[fingolfin]

and 2.8.0 is in beta and will be released soon