# Installing gEDA/gaf on Windows - the Cygwin way

This guide describes one way to build gEDA/gaf (gschem and friends) on the Windows operating system. It uses Cygwin as the layer between Windows and the *nix world (ie gcc, make, bash etc…).

## Instructions

1. Download and run setup.exe from cygwin website: http://www.cygwin.com.

In the package selection dialog, select the following packages:

(Hint: press the “view” button once to arrange the list in alphabetical order)

    atk-devel
    crypt
    file
    gcc
    gtk2-x11-devel
    guile-devel
    libgmp-devel
    libtool1.5
    make
    pango-devel
    patchutils
    pcre-devel
    pcre-doc
    pkg-config
    xorg-x11-devel
    xorg-x11-fscl
    xterm

2. Append these lines to your .bash_profile:

    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/geda/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
    export PATH=$HOME/geda/bin:$PATH
    export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/geda/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH

Update your environment:

    $ source .bash_profile

3. Go to the gEDA sources download page.

From the gEDA/gaf group, download only the packages which have a date as its version. The necessary dependencies were already installed in step 1. However, if you haven’t installed or built the libstroke package, be sure to add

    --disable-stroke

to the opts= line. Add the following options to the opts= line in the Makefile

    --disable-update-mime-database --disable-update-desktop-database --disable-nls

4. Go to the download directory and type:

    $ make open
    $ make install
    ( ...patience... )

5. Now, to properly view the documentation from the help menu of gschem:

Locate the executables of your browser and PDF reader and create links from /usr/bin. Examples:

    $ ln -s "c:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" /usr/bin/iexplore
    $ ln -s "c:\Program Files\Firefox\firefox.exe" /usr/bin/firefox
    $ ln -s "c:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" /usr/bin/acroread

Try:

    $ iexplore
    ( Microsoft Internet Explorer appears )
    $ firefox
    ( Firefox appears - if installed )
    $ acroread
    ( Adobe Acrobat Reader appears )
    $ gschemdoc -m
    ( gEDA documentation appears )

6. Finally, start the X server:

    $ startx

Have fun!