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

[Malcolm Blue]

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



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