Subsections
Microsoft Windows Options
This section lists installation options for Microsoft Windows.
Using Microsoft Visual C++
If you are building OOMMF software from source using the Microsoft
Visual C++ command line compiler, cl.exe, it is necessary to set up
the path and some environment variables before running the compiler.
There is a batch file distributed with Visual C++ that you can run to do
this. The name of the file varies between Visual C++ releases, but for
example may be vcvarsall.bat or setenv.cmd. For 64-bit builds
you may need to include the “amd64” option on the batch file command
line. You may want to set up your system so this batch file gets run
automatically when you open a command window. See your compiler and
system documentation for details.
Using MinGW g++
Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are supported using the MinGW ports of
g++. (The 32-bit and 64-bit versions of g++ are separate downloads.)
Use a standard Windows Tcl/Tk, such as the
ActiveTcl
release from ActiveState. You will also need to edit the appropriate
platform file to select g++ as the compiler. If you are using a 32-bit
Tcl/Tk and g++, then the platform file is
oommf\config\platforms\wintel.tcl. For 64-bit
Tcl/Tk and g++ the platform file is
oommf\config\platforms\windows-x86_64.tcl.
Using the Cygwin toolkit
The Cygwin Project
is
a free port of the GNU development environment to Windows, which
includes the GNU C++ compiler g++ and X11. To build OOMMF within the
Cygwin environment, start up a Cygwin or Cygwin64 shell and follow the
usual Unix build procedure. The platform name will be cygtel
or cygwin-x86_64, according to whether you are running a 32- or
64-bit Cygwin tclsh, respectively. The resulting OOMMF build
requires the Cygwin environment to run, so it will need to be launched
from a Cygwin shell. Moreover, OOMMF on Cygwin uses X11 as the
windowing interface, so you will need to have the Cygwin port of X11
installed; typically OOMMF will be started from an X11 xterm or
equivalent. Of course, you will also need the Tcl and Tk packages
installed (called tcl and tcl-tk, respectively, by the
Cygwin package manager). To build OOMMF from source you will
need the gcc-g++, tcl-devel, and tcl-tk-devel
packages and dependencies.
If you get errors saying a child process couldn't be forked (typically
with either “resource temporarily unavailable” or “Loaded to
different address” error messages), then follow this procedure:
- Exit all Cygwin processes
- Use Windows Explorer or a Windows command shell to launch
c:\cygwin\bin\ash.exe
- Run /bin/rebaseall inside the ash shell.
Additional information on this problem can be found in the Cygwin
documentation.
The Cygwin versions of Tcl/Tk prior to 8.6 were not threaded, so
OOMMF built with Tcl/Tk 8.5 and older will likewise not be
threaded. This limitation is removed with the Cygwin Tcl/Tk 8.6
release.
Setting the TCL_LIBRARY environment variable
If you encounter difficulties during OOMMF start up, you may need to set
the environment variable
TCL_LIBRARY. (NOTE: This
is almost never necessary!)
Bring up the Control Panel (e.g., by selecting
Settings|Control Panel off the Start menu), and select
System. Go to the Environment tab, and enter
TCL_LIBRARY as the Variable, and the name of the directory containing
init.tcl for the Value, e.g.,
%SystemDrive%\Program Files\Tcl\lib\tcl8.0
Click Set and OK to finish.
OOMMF Documentation Team
September 27, 2024
