Windows CygWin installation notes

Some packages which come with recent installations of CygWin are, unfortunately, affected with bugs and do not allow for a proper development environment. We list in this page all known problems in the recent installations of CygWin we could identify, and suggested workarounds.
We try to keep this page up to date as new problems are found.

• The version of make ("make --version" gives 3.81) in the latest versions of CygWin does not handle the definition of file paths properly and produces errors like the following:

         -----------
         common.gmk:36: *** target pattern contains no `%'.  Stop.
  
         Starting build...
  
         GNUmakefile:55: *** target pattern contains no `%'.  Stop.
         -----------
      

  Until a better solution is found or a new patched version of make is provided in CygWin, please replace make.exe with the old version of make (3.80) that you can either download from paracoda or download directly from the Geant4 web site by following the instructions given here.
  Open a CygWin shell and give the following commands (NOTE: you need to have wget installed in your CygWin installation!):

         cd /usr/bin
         mv make.exe make_381.exe
         wget http://geant4.cern.ch/support/extras/cygwin/make.exe
         chmod +x make.exe
      

• The version of bash ("bash --version" gives 3.2.25-16) which comes with the latest versions of CygWin is broken and does not allow for proper sourcing of shell scripts (including also the Configure script to be used for the Geant4 installation). Therefore, if you adopt the bash shell (the default in CygWin) in your CygWin session, you will most likely be exposed to errors.
  Until a better solution is found or a new patched version of bash is provided in CygWin, please replace bash.exe with the old version of bash (3.1-6) that you can either install from CygWin, by selecting the alternative version provided instead of the default, either download it from xmission, or download directly from the Geant4 web site by following the instructions given here.
  Open a CygWin shell and give the following commands (NOTE: you need to have wget and tcsh installed in your CygWin installation!):

         cd /usr/bin
         tcsh
         mv bash.exe bash_322516.exe
         wget http://geant4.cern.ch/support/extras/cygwin/bash.exe
         chmod +x bash.exe
      

  Restart from scratch your CygWin session.
  

• If you wish to build DLL libraries of Geant4, in order to have make selecting the right instance of the command link.exe, do the following from your CygWin prompt:

         cd /usr/bin
         mv link.exe cyglink.exe