Building XWinX From Source
XWinX only compiles inside the Cygwin environment on Microsoft Windows® at present. If you successfully build it on a different platform, please let us
know.
Software Required
Cygwin (standard)
- bash
- binutils
- cygwin
- gcc
- gzip
- libpng
- make
- tar
- w32api
- zip
- zlib
Cygwin/XFree
You can download the standard Cygwin software from http://www.cygwin.com/, and the Cygwin/XFree software from http://www.cygwin.com/xfree/.
Installing Standard Cygwin Software
- Download http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe to your Microsoft Windows® machine
- Run setup.exe
- You will be asked a series of questions. Reply as best you can, choosing to download the packages from the Internet, and selecting the directory to install it. Choose the defaults if you wish
- When it comes time to pick a mirror, you can pick http://planetmirror.com/ if you are unsure
- After choosing your mirror, you will be asked what packages you would like to install. Pick whatever packages interest you, but be sure to install at the minimum, "bash", "binutils", "cygwin", "gcc", "gzip", "libpng", "make", "tar", "w32api", "zip" and "zlib". If you have previously installed Cygwin, do not be alarmed if you can't find all of the packages - if they are already installed then they may not appear on the screen.
- When you proceed, Cygwin will install itself on your machine
Installing the Cygwin XFree Software
- Point a web browser to http://www.cygwin.com/xfree/
- Under "Downloading and Installing", click on the "precompiled binaries" link
- Download at a minimum Xbin.tgz, Xlib.tgz and Xprog.tgz and save them to C:\temp
- Start Cygwin (Start→Progams→Cygnus Solutions→Cygwin Bash Shell)
- Run cd /
- Run mv /cygdrive/c/temp/X*tgz .
- Run tar -zxf Xbin.tgz
- Run tar -zxf Xlib.tgz
- Run tar -zxf Xprog.tgz
- Add the /usr/X11R6/bin directory to your PATH (note that this is only required to run XWinX, not to compile it)
- For Windows NT® and Windows 2000® based systems, run Start→Settings→Control Panel→System. Then click on Advanced→Environment Variables and change the PATH variable. You can change it here for only your user or for all users. Add ";C:\cygwin\usr\X11R6\bin" onto the end, (don't overwrite anything) assuming that you installed Cygwin into "C:\cygwin"
- For 95/98/ME, you can add "PATH=%PATH%;C:\cygwin\usr\X11R6\bin" to the end of your AUTOEXEC.BAT
Compiling
You should be able to extract the files with tar xzvf and just run make to build the xwinx.exe binary.
Source and binary archives can be made with make srcdist and make bindist. You probably won't want need to use these, but they could be handy for making XWinX distributions for friends or other machines.
You can return the source to it's original state by running make clean.
After you have build XWinX, take a look at Using XWinX for information on runing it.