Compiling XCircuit for Windows From Source

Software without source code is not software ---NASA mantra

Compilation Notes:

Compiling xcircuit from source requires considerable overhead in disk space. To ensure that everything runs smoothly, it is recommended to do the default installation of Cygwin and XFree86 (unless you already have an alternate X-server). Cygwin and XFree86 will gobble up a total of about 500MB of disk space (more like 2GB for the "full install"). Only a fraction of this is actually required to compile xcircuit, and only a fraction of the fraction is required to run xcircuit. However, unless you know what you are doing, be wary of removing parts of the Cygwin and XFree86 distributions.

Pre-Compilation Instructions:

Compilation of xcircuit is done using Cygwin, which creates a minimal UNIX environment under any MS Windows OS. Cygwin is POSIX compliant, and comes with all of the well known UNIX utilities. The installation of Cygwin provides the Cygnus "gcc" compiler. The compiler can link code to a number of ".dll" files. The "cygwin1.dll" translates UNIX system calls into something that Windows can handle. This forms the basis of Cygwin-compiled programs.

Note that there is a huge memory difference between the "basic install" and "full install" of Cygwin. The "full install" will give you a complete RedHat Linux system on your computer. For the purposes of compiling and running occasional UNIX/X11 programs under windows, you really only need the "basic install".

Install Cygwin

Go to http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/, where you can find a one-button install that should work for most systems. Follow the instructions.

Alternately, the whole Cygwin system can be downloaded from one of their mirror sites (if you are using a UNIX system to do to the download, I recommend using GNU "wget", which can make copies of entire ftp and http directory structures. See gnu.org to obtain "wget") along with the "setup.exe" file which can then be run to perform the install. I did this myself, because I was installing on a laptop at home but didn't want to wait for 2GB of data to drip through the phone line. I pulled down the entire distribution source at work and burned it onto 3 CDs. Then I took the CDs home, downloaded into my laptop, ran "setup.exe", and everything went smoothly from there. The only problem with this method is that because you don't know what subset of source files are required for installation, you must download everything.

The basic install of Cygwin does not automatically download XFree86. When Cygwin prompts for the packages to download, it is necessary to go to package "XFree86" and select "XFree86-base" for installation.

After installation, the source directories for Cygwin and xfree can be removed, reclaiming a large amount of disk space.

To run the XFree86 X-server, from the Cygwin (bash) shell, do:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin
startx

This brings up a full-screen window with the usual default X background, an X cursor, and several xterm windows. In the absence of commercial X servers, xcircuit will be run from one of these xterms.

Commercial X servers are recommended mostly because they run in the background on the Windows desktop, and all X11 applications appear directly on the desktop, instead of in a separate window. Rendering speed is usually much faster. Nevertheless, the XFree86 server works well, if a little slow.

Note: Check the status of the "rootless" mode for XFree86, apparently in an experimental state as of October 2002.

Compilation Instructions:

Create a directory for the distribution. Preferably, this is /usr/local/src/ in the Cygwin distribution (e.g., C:\cygwin\usr\local\src\), or it can be the default directory /home/Administrator that is the current working directory when the Cygwin window launches.

Download the latest distribution of xcircuit (version 3.0) into this directory. From the Cygwin shell, do the following:

tar xfz xcircuit-3.0.tgz

You may delete the .tgz file after running the "tar" command. Go to the top of the "xcircuit" directory tree and compile:

cd xcircuit-3.0
./configure
make
make install

Running XCircuit:

Before running "xcircuit", the X server must be running. For the XFree86 server, that means doing

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin
startx

from the Cygwin prompt.

Note:
If a commercial X server is running in the Windows background, then "xcircuit" can be launched directly from the Cygwin prompt. "xcircuit" may also be launched from the desktop, but requires a batch file to set the CAD_HOME environment variable (see below), then run an xterm (xterm.exe from /usr/X11R6/bin under the Cygwin distribution).

Returning to the instructions for use with the XFree86 server: In an xterm, do

export CAD_HOME=/home/cad
xcircuit

email: tim@bach.ece.jhu.edu

Last updated: November 19, 2002