[winGRASS] native winGRASS pre-alpha testers needed

[Moritz Lennert]

Dear Peitro,

Pietro Calogero wrote:
> Dear Moritz,
> I have just subscribed to the winGRASS email list but have not yet 
> received a confirming email. I hope that the email confirmation will 
> instruct me how to submit questions to the list, because I have found no 
> way to do so from the outside. That is why I am emailing you directly. 
> Sorry; given the required instructions, I will not do this again.

I imagine you will soon receive this confirmation mail. In the meantime, 
don't hesitate to ask me directly.

> However I am at a total loss: how do you start winGRASS63?
> I have unzipped wingrass63_cvs20070910 onto a testing PC at c:\grass 
> (rather than in Program Files, to avoid the incompatibility of winGRASS 
> with spaces in directory names).
> I double-clicked on the c:\grass\bin\grass63.bat file, and the cmd 
> window flickers into and out of existence in a blink.

Have you installed Tcl/Tk ?

You can get it at http://www.activestate.com/products/activetcl/



> 
> I assume that this "pre-compiled binary" actually requires considerable 
> configuration. 

Actually it doesn't.

> I have searched repeatedly through the GRASS website, the 
> wingrass archives, and Google to find instructions. As far as I can tell 
> they are not available on the internet. 

There is a README at the same page you downloaded the binary from:

http://moritz.homelinux.org/grass/wingrass/.

The main instructions you will need are:

"INSTALL

- Download wingrass63_cvsXXXXXXXX.zip (XXXXXXXX represents the date at 
which the current package was compiled)
- Unzip (easiest to unzip in C:\, but if not adapt WINGISBASE in 
grass63.bat - see below).
- Install ActiveState Tcl (http://www.activestate.com/products/activetcl/)"

and

"RUN

- double-click on grass/bin/grass63.bat
- you can put a shortcut to grass63.bat on you desktop and associate it 
with the grass logo (grasslogo_vector_small.ico) which you can find in 
this same directory."


> There is plenty of commentary 
> about grass62 configured to run on Cygwin; that does not seem to apply. 
> Or perhaps part of it applies, but there is no way for me to figure out 
> which part applies. 

No, the Cygwin port functions quite differently.


> 
> As you can see, I have done quite a bit of digging on this, so please do 
> not brush me off with RTFM. I recommend that such instructions should be 
> posted on a page such as:
> http://grass.itc.it/platforms/wingrass.html
> Where installation instructions for native winGRASS63 are conspicuously 
> absent. 

Good idea. I'll put parts of the readme there.

> Assume that the installer is someone who has never used Cygwin (and will 
> never do so), and has never installed GRASS on a Windows platform. 
> Assume the installer can open the cmd window and is willing to use it, 
> but has no idea how Windows XP is configured under the hood.

Normally, the installation is actually extremely easy. Just unzip the 
downloaded file, install tcl/tk and off you go.

However, some elements still don't work correctly, notably vector 
attribute data access.

Moritz