Installation from a pre-built binary tarball should in the long run be the easiest and fastest way to install Sage. This is not necessarily the case right now. Note that Sage is itself a programming environment, so building it from source guarantees you maximum flexibility in the long run. Nonetheless, we provide pre-built binaries.
Assumptions: You have a computer with at least 2 GB of free disk space and the operating system is Linux (32-bit or 64-bit) or OS X (10.5.x).
Highly Recommended: It is highly recommended that you have LaTeX installed.
Download the latest binary tarball from http://www.sagemath.org/download.html . For example, it might be called sage-x.y.z-x86_64-Linux.tgz. Unpack it on your computer in a directory which you have permission to read and write:
tar zxvf sage-x.y.z-x86_64-Linux.tgz
You can move the resulting directory sage-x.y.z-x86_64-Linux anywhere and still run sage from it. You can also copy the file sage from that directory and put it anywhere, e.g., /usr/local/bin/, but then you have to edit the SAGE_ROOT="....." line at the top of that file, replacing the dots with the path to the Sage directory sage-x.y.z-x86_64-Linux. As long as /usr/local/bin is in your $PATH, you can then type sage from the command line to run Sage. Another approach is to create a symbolic link from sage-x.y.z-x86_64-Linux to, say, /usr/local/share/sage:
ln -s /.../path_to/.../sage-x.y.z-x86_64-Linux /usr/local/share/sage
Then put /usr/local/share/sage in your $PATH. If you do this, you can type sage from the command line to run Sage. Also, if you install a different version of Sage, you just have to delete the old link and create one from the new directory to /usr/local/share/sage.
Finally, you can also combine these two approaches, copying sage to /usr/local/bin/, creating a link from sage-x.y.z-x86_64-Linux to /usr/local/share/sage, and editing the file /usr/local/bin/sage: change the line
SAGE_ROOT="....."
to
SAGE_ROOT="/usr/local/share/sage"
When you want to install a new version of Sage, just delete the old link and create a new one; you shouldn’t have to replace or modify the file /usr/local/bin/sage.
The first time you run Sage, and any time you move the Sage directory or create a link as above, you may see a message saying
The Sage install tree may have moved.
Regenerating Python.pyo and .pyc files that hardcode the install PATH
(please wait at most a few minutes)...
Do not interrupt this.
We currently distribute .dmg files for OS X 10.4.x and 10.5.x. But we would like to make Sage more of a native application. Work for that is ongoing, but help is always welcome.
The best way to install Sage on Windows is to install VirtualBox for Windows and then download and install the VirtualBox distribution of Sage. See this URL for further instructions on installing Sage on Windows. Be sure to read the file README.txt.