Install form with Homebrew, apt, Nix, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• form
• tform

Project history

FORM was started in 1984 by Jos Vermaseren at NIKHEF. The official NIKHEF history describes its evolution across Apollo workstations, Atari ST, NeXT systems, PCs, Linux systems, and multicore machines, while the current GitHub README names Jos Vermaseren as the original author and lists later contributors in the AUTHORS file.

Parallel variants became part of the FORM story: ParFORM was developed for multiprocessor and cluster systems, while TFORM became the multithreaded version for shared-memory machines. The GitHub project was established in 2013 and continues to publish tagged releases, including the 5.0 series in 2026.

Adoption history

FORM's adoption is concentrated in research computing and high-energy physics rather than general-purpose scripting. The README states that it has been essential for state-of-the-art high-energy-physics computations, and the NIKHEF pages describe an ecosystem of manuals, courses, tutorials, a reference manual, and workshops around the tool.

How it is used

FORM programs read symbolic expressions from files, apply symbolic or algebraic transformations, and print textual mathematical results. The distributed command set includes form for sequential use and tform for multithreaded use, with optional dependencies such as GMP, MPFR, zstd, zlib, and FLINT improving capabilities or performance.

Why package nerds care

FORM is package-nerd significant because it is an old, performance-oriented domain tool that still ships as a Unix-style command-line program. It bridges scientific computing, symbolic algebra, disk-backed data structures, and long-running source distribution history, making it a classic example of research software that package managers keep usable outside its original lab environment.

Timeline

• 1984: FORM development started.
• 1999: ParFORM development era began on multiprocessor systems.
• 2013: Public GitHub repository created and 4.x releases published there.
• 2026: FORM 5.0-series releases published.

Related projects

• Related FORM variants include ParFORM for distributed-memory multiprocessor systems and TFORM for shared-memory multithreading. FORM also occupies the efficient, large-expression side of the computer-algebra landscape, often used alongside more general CAS tools in hybrid workflows.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/form-dev/form/releases?per_page=10
• https://github.com/form-dev/form
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/form-dev/form/master/AUTHORS
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/form-dev/form/master/README.md
• https://www.nikhef.nl/~form/aboutform/aboutform.html
• https://www.nikhef.nl/~form/maindir/documentation/documentation.html