Building and Geomview under Windows

Questions about installing Geomview under Cygwin can be taken to the Cygwin and Geomview users mailing lists.

Here are instructions on installing Cygwin and Geomview under Microsoft Windows.

Note: the Cygwin developers made major changes to their X server distribution in November 2008. Prior to those changes, Cygwin's X server supported hardware acceleration, and Geomview use was robust and reliable. After those changes, robustness, reliability and hardware acceleration have been lost. Cygwin users who have not upgraded their installation since November 2008 should avoid doing so until the new X server improves significantly. At this point, it is preferable to run VirtualBox, install a debian-based Linux from a downloaded ISO disk image, and then sudo apt-get install geomview.

1. Install cygwin and its packages using the net installer you can download from http://www.cygwin.com/. Along with all the packages installed by default, you will need to install a minimum of:

   Under the Devel category:

   • byacc (only if you're a developer planning on building from Geomview's CVS repository. ln -s /usr/bin/byacc /usr/bin/yacc)
   • flex
   • gcc
   • gcc-g++ (cc1plus is used)
   • libiconv (only needed for xforms 1.0.91)
   • make
   • minires-devel (replaces libresolv)

   Under the Graphics category:

   • opengl

   Under the Libs category:

   • jpeg (only needed for xforms)

   Under the Text category:

   • texi2html

   Under the X11 category:

   • lesstif
   • libXm-devel
   • libXm2 (one of lesstif or libXm will provide Motif support)
   • xorg-x11-devel (for some required libs and includes)

   Cygwin should install X11 by default.

   If also building SaVi, under the Libs category:

   • tcltk libraries for use with SaVi. These libraries are also used by other Geomview modules.
     Do not attempt to install Tcl/Tk yourself. Use the option in the Cygwin installer. That is what SaVi expects, and it will allow SaVi to run without launching X.

   Note: Use Cygwin base 1.5.20-1 or later. Geomview does not compile on Cygwin base 1.5.19.

2. Launch cygwin, and prepare to type commands at its bash shell prompt. As Geomview requires X to run, it makes sense to launch the X server and work in an xterm window, which provides ctrl-mouseclick menu configuration options for left-, right-, and middle-click. (You may need to alter e.g. trackpoint preference in the Mouse control panel to access the ctrl-middle-click menu.) If you have launched Cygwin's bash shell, type startx in the cygwin window to launch the X server. This will bring up an xterm window that you can now use to type all commands in. (If the startx command fails, try xinit -- -multiwindow.)
3. Download the Geomview 1.9.4 release. This release builds easily with modern compilers, and is far more robust in pipe and I/O communications than the previous 1.8.1 release. With SaVi, this can make working with piping of cone and footprint LISTs to Geomview much more reliable. (Should you choose to pull a more recent Geomview from CVS, you will need to run the top-level reconf script to attempt to generate some files already built in official releases. reconf requires the autoconf, automake, and libtool development tools - see the README.cvs file.) Use the 1.9.4 release!
4. Unpack e.g. geomview-1.9.4.tar.gz with:
   tar xfvz geomview-1.9.4.tar.gz
   to create a local folder. That folder becomes the working directory for the following instructions.
   Alternatively, you could pull a Geomview CVS snapshot from the sourceforge CVS head. You will need to run ./reconf to generate a configure file and Makefiles before running ./configure and make as detailed below. ./configure and Makefiles are not stored in CVS.
5. This step is optional and only needed to use all of the interesting included Geomview modules: get xforms (from http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/xforms, old site with unreliable binaries: http://world.std.com/~xforms/) and save a copy in the geomview directory. Unpack this with e.g.:
   • tar xvfz xforms-1.0.90.tar.gz
   in the geomview-1.9.4 directory. Then do:
   • mv xforms-1.0.90 xforms
   • cd xforms
   • ./configure
   • make
   • make install (does not require superuser access on Cygwin)
   • cd ..
   xforms is not required by SaVi.
6. Build a local copy of Geomview with the following commands:
   • MOTIFLIBS='-lDtPrint -lMrm -lXm -lXt -lXmu -lXp -lXext -lX11 -lSM -lICE'
   • ./configure --with-motif=/usr/X11R6 --with-opengl=/usr/X11R6 --with-xforms
     (--with-xforms= can also take an absolute path, but this is not needed if you did a make install to install xforms in the expected place. If you are not building with xforms, omit the --with-xforms). If you have problems with building with OpenGL, leave out the --with-opengl=/usr/X11R6 to get to a working Geomview.
     
   • make
   configure and make both take a while - be patient.
7. If you haven't already, execute startx to spawn the X server and desktop display and get an xterm console window. (An alternative is xinit -- -multiwindow -clipboard for better integration with Windows.) Alternatively, on older Cygwin, run startxwin.bat to launch individual X windows as Windows windows. Then run:
   ./geomview
   in the spawned xterm window that knows it's part of the X display, rather than in Cygwin's initial console window, to check that Geomview works.
8. You can then put a working copy of Geomview in /usr/local if you desire, with:
   make install
9. Unpack and make a copy of SaVi in a local directory. See the instructions in SaVi's README file and on building SaVi 1.4. You will be typing:
   make ARCH=cygwin
   in SaVi's topmost directory.
10. Run Geomview and SaVi together from the Geomview directory with:
    ./geomview -run $SAVIDIR/savi
    (replace $SAVIDIR with the absolute location of the SaVi directory.)

Though SaVi could be ported to Microsoft Windows and use a native Tcl/Tk interpreter there, there is no native Geomview for Microsoft Windows, so SaVi would have to be modified to output to a different 3D renderer or directly to OpenGL. Cygwin lets SaVi and Geomview run in the Microsoft Windows environment.

These instructions are based on original instructions and work by Matthias Foehl and advice from Belinda Marchand, Will Wray and Brad Barber, with thanks.