[GRASS5] Re: installation/compiling instruction for GRASS on cygwin

GRASS GRASS developer
1

Grass5 list,

I read through the Andreas' pages. A couple of notes for
discussion before we make some changes:

My distribution has the unixODBC and PostgreSQL configured. I am in
the process of upgrading to unixODBC 2.0.5 (March 22, 2001) and
PostgreSQL 7.1RC1 (March 24, 2001) Please let me know if you
have any heartburn about these versions.

Perl is available in the cygwin under contrib. So, we need to rewrite
the note on perl.

If you get the latest X11R6 distribution it contains everything
ftp://mirrors.rcn.net/pub/sourceware/cygwin/xfree/xc-4-binaries/4.0.3/
including the XWin server. Please note this new link. These were
updated March 22, 2001. The StartXWin.bat file needs to be
edited, here is my example with Carriage Returns at the end of
each line:

@echo off
SET DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0.0
SET PATH=c:\usr\X11R6\bin;c:\bin;%PATH%
start XWin -screen 0 1024x768x16 -whitepixel 255 -blackpixel 0
start /B xterm -sl 1000 -sb -rightbar -ms red -fg yellow -bg black -e bash
start /B mwm

The C:\usr\bin in the path will not work. Under cygwin it is a mount
to the C:\bin. Make sure you configure your path correctly. This
Xwin takes over the console. All NT icons, windows, etc., are not
available unless you 'kill -9' the XWin process and then they come
back. The xterm puts an XTerm into the XWindow and mwm adds
a window manager. You could also use twm. It is as simple as
that and you have a free windows server. If you type

xwin -probe

it will give you a list of the screen resolutions available to you.

I have used the StarNET X-Win32 for over two years. I prefer it
because of the speed and because the xterm starts in a window
where the remainder of the NT system is still available.

The links to the tarballs are going to the directory itself. I assume
Markus made that change. And a good one, too; because there
is no tarball. I make a ZIP file. My distribution does not rely on
the Cygwin system to be installed. It includes the Xfree and
Cygwin DLLs. So, we need to discuss if both the ZIP and the
tarball are needed.

I will add more.exe and less.exe to the next distribution.

John Huddleston

----------------------------------------
If you want to unsubscribe from GRASS Development Team mailing list write to:
minordomo@geog.uni-hannover.de with
subject 'unsubscribe grass5'

2

Andreas:

I think the changes look good, however, having written and supported user documentation before, I know that even the little things can confuse normally intelligent people when they are doing something new for the first time.

Therefore, I have some (mostly) minor changes to suggest. I have marked the changes that I think will help avoid confusing people with a **. The other comments are just for completeness. I will leave it to you to decide if these changes are necessary.

For both documents:

1. **The cygwin setup program doesn't show which packages are from 'latest' and which are from 'contrib', so we will need to clarify which packages are needed for grass. I just know that someone will only download the packages listed. We might want to identify which packages are needed for development vs running grass. I have cleared off a NTFS partition to install a second version of NT4. I can see if I can come up with a shorter list of packages for 'users', then a more complete list for developers. Let me know if you want me to do this (it may take a few days, since I am swamped right now - paying clients and government deadlines have to come first).

2. For the paragraph on X-Servers, we should mention that the Cygwin/XFree86 and Starnet servers have been tested with grass. None of the others have, as far as I know. Also, the XFree86 version has a few 'features' that still need to be fixed.

3. The paragraphs on getting the X-Servers and starting the X-Servers are very different in the two documents. (I rewrote some of the compile document and sent my changes to John and Markus last month, - so these differences are my fault). We may want to use one or the other version.

In the compile document:

1. Paragraph 5 describes what to do after Paragraph 8. Perhaps it should come after that paragraph in the document.

2. **Also in paragraph 5 it says a 'sample header file under src/CMD/head/head.i686-pc-cygwin' this
should be src/CMD/head/os-specific/head.i686-pc-cygwin.

3. **After configuring and making, the head file is 'src/CMD/head/head.i686-pc-cygwin' not 'src/CMD/head/head'

In the March 22 version of the XWin package, there is an experimental server for win9x. I hope to try it out to see if it works, but I still suspect that the XDriver problems are caused by poor process management on those platforms. I still think that we should only try to support grass on NT/2000.

I browsed the GRASSLIST archives, after receiving your message the other day, and saw that there have been several users with problems trying out GRASS on CYGWIN. If you are happy with the documents as posted, or after minor revisions based on John's and my comments, you may want to post a message to that list to let the people that had problems know there is a new binary distribution and new instructions?

Hope this helps,

Malcolm

---------------------------------------- If you want to unsubscribe from GRASS Development Team mailing list write to:
minordomo@geog.uni-hannover.de with
subject 'unsubscribe grass5'

3

John,

On Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 02:23:36PM -0700, John Huddleston wrote:

Grass5 list,

I read through the Andreas' pages. A couple of notes for
discussion before we make some changes:

[...]

Perl is available in the cygwin under contrib. So, we need to rewrite
the note on perl.

You may have seen it: I added a perl search recently:
  checking for perl... (cached) /usr/bin/perl
We should simply add the Cygwin contrib directory to the search path.

[...]

The links to the tarballs are going to the directory itself. I assume
Markus made that change. And a good one, too; because there
is no tarball. I make a ZIP file.

Nope, this was done by Andreas.

  My distribution does not rely on
the Cygwin system to be installed. It includes the Xfree and
Cygwin DLLs. So, we need to discuss if both the ZIP and the
tarball are needed.

I will add more.exe and less.exe to the next distribution.

Anyway I would be glad if
make bindist
would generate the grass_cygwin version. I am not sure why it must be
a .zip? Cygwin is much more a unix environment.

Cheers

Markus

----------------------------------------
If you want to unsubscribe from GRASS Development Team mailing list write to:
minordomo@geog.uni-hannover.de with
subject 'unsubscribe grass5'

4

John and Andreas,

On Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 02:23:36PM -0700, John Huddleston wrote:

The links to the tarballs are going to the directory itself. I assume
Markus made that change. And a good one, too; because there
is no tarball. I make a ZIP file. My distribution does not rely on
the Cygwin system to be installed. It includes the Xfree and
Cygwin DLLs. So, we need to discuss if both the ZIP and the
tarball are needed.

John Huddleston

I have roughly changed the
http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/grass5/binary/windows_cygnus/cygwin_grass50bininstall.html

to reflect the .zip package. Seems Andreas wanted to utilize the
grass5install.sh.

Sorry, I don't have more time to polish these instructions. First you
need to agree which method to use to build the cygwin binaries.

Markus

----------------------------------------
If you want to unsubscribe from GRASS Development Team mailing list write to:
minordomo@geog.uni-hannover.de with
subject 'unsubscribe grass5'