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Cygwin and GMT

   

Because GMT works best in conjugation with UNIX tools we suggest you install GMT using the Cygwin product from Cygnus (www.cygnus.com/cygwin). In short, Cygwin provides the bash  shell (Bourne Again shell); in this shell you have access to most standard GNU development tools such as compilers and text processing tools (awk , grep , sed , etc.). If you don’t mind learning bash  scripting19.3 you can write any type of GMT scripts (The GMT examples also come in bash  form).

Follow the instructions on the Cygwin home page on how to install the executables; they are in ZIP format and the whole package comes with an installer. It is difficult not to do this correctly. Also follow their advice on setting a larger environmental space (simply launch cygwin from the Start menu, click on the properties icon, and set the environment space there. While at it you may want to enlarge the window to 50 lines and change the font size).

You need as always to install netCDF. Look at the netCDF home page19.4 and locate the discussion of a WIN32 port. Following the links gives you either the option to ftp a ready-made libnetcdf.a library or to learn how to make your own in Cygwin.

GMT installs as under any other UNIX platform by running configure first, then type make all. For details see the general README file. After installing you should make a few changes to the setup:

1.
In Windows/DOS, set the two environmental variables HOME and GMTHOME to point to your ``home'' directory while running Cygwin and the GMT install directory. These two parameters should be defined in the autoexec.bat file and could be something like19.5

Under Windows NT you set these environmental parameters via the System control panel.

2.
In this home directory, make the file .bashrc where you place a few definitions:



 
next up previous contents index
Next: Known Problems Up: GMT on non-UNIX platforms Previous: Introduction
Paul Wessel
1999-12-03