Notes for Cygwin users

Cygwin is a Unix-like toolkit that runs atop Microsoft Windows. For all intents and purposes, it is a fully functional GNU/POSIX application platform, so wherever the 4Suite installation instructions refer to UNIX or Linux, they usually apply to Cygwin, also.

You may choose to build and install 4Suite under Cygwin so that it can run as a Cygwin application, or you may choose to build and install under Windows so that it can run as a native Windows application.

This document is for users who want to build and install under Cygwin. There is separate documentation in the Akara for doing native Windows builds with alternative compilers such as Cygwin's mingw32.

Before building 4Suite on Cygwin, you need to use Cygwin's installer application to make sure certain Cygwin components are installed.

1. Run the Cygwin installer (setup.exe). You can run this even if you already have Cygwin installed; it will allow you to modify your existing installation.

When you get to the "Select Packages" screen, you need:

• the base Cygwin packages, of course
• python (under Interpreters)
• gcc (under Devel)
• inetutils (under Net or Libs)
• openssl-devel (under Libs)
• postgresql (under Database) if you want to use it for the repository back-end
• jpeg (under Graphics) if you want to use the the graphic portion of Triclops, 4Suite's RDF model visualizer.

If you decide to build your own Python from source instead of using the package, then you probably don't need inetutils or openssl-devel.

2. When installation is done, start your Cygwin shell (a shortcut should be on your desktop, if you let it install one). You should be in your home directory.

3. Get the 4Suite source code you want to build.

4. Build and install 4Suite in the usual way as for Unix systems.

cd 4Suite (wherever you installed to)
python setup.py install 

If you are using PostgreSQL, look for the postgresql .README file in /usr/doc/Cygwin for the necessary info to get started and to troubleshoot common errors.

Evan Lenz contributes the following info for enabling Triclops under Cygwin:

1. You will need to install the "jpeg: A library for manipulating JPEG image format files" package from Cygwin. This can be found under the "Graphics" category in the Cygwin setup.exe program.
2. Download the latest graphviz binary for Cygwin from: http://www.bell-labs.com/cgi-user/wwexptools/gensnapshot?graphviz
3. Unpack contents to a folder of your choice in the Cygwin directory tree, e.g. /usr/bin/graphviz
4. In the 4Suite Dashboard, go to the "Configure" page and modify the "'dot' Executable directory" field to point to the location of dot.exe in your graphviz folder, e.g. /usr/bin/graphviz/bin. Also on this page is the "Rotate RDF Graphs 90 degrees?" option. In my experience, it looked better when set to "No". YMMV
5. Wait a while, or just run "4ss_manager restart". At this point, Triclops will run, but the results will not be nice, unless you have the TrueType Times font installed in a place where dot.exe can find it. Also, an error message will be printed to the console from which you ran 4ss_manager, indicating that the font could not be found in the search path. The solution, then, is to create one of those directories and place the font in there.
6. Create the following directory in your Cygwin directory tree: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType
7. Copy the times.ttf file into that folder. Since you're on Windows, you should already have this file. On my computer (WinXP), it was found in C:\Windows\Fonts
8. Try viewing the Triclops page again, and things should look much better now.