[winGRASS] Re: Welcome to the "winGRASS" mailing list (Digest mode)

[Glynn Clements]

Natalie O'Toole wrote:

> My name is Natalie and I work for the Mount Royal College Library in 
> Calgary, Alberta, and I'm a first-time user of GRASS. My question is:
> 
> I'm trying to install GRASS on the MS Windows platform: what is the Cygwin 
> tool used for?

Cygwin essentially provides a Unix-compatible environment on Windows.
It consists of a DLL (cygwin1.dll) which provides the standard Unix
functions, plus a number of common Unix libraries and programs.

The Cygwin desktop (and Start menu) icon is supposed to start a Unix
"shell" (i.e. command prompt).

GRASS is essentially Unix software so, on Windows, it requires Cygwin
to provide Unix compatibility. [It might be possible to build GRASS to
use Microsoft's Services for Unix (SFU) system instead, but I don't
think that anyone has tried this yet.]

> Whenever I run the Cygwin tool  the interace only shows up 
> for one second. Also, when installing GRASS, when I have to type in: sh 
> grass5install.sh grass5package_bin.tar.gz, do I have to do this in UNIX, 
> or can I use a DOS prompt, or do I use Cygwin?

In Cygwin.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>