If you are running Windows 95, 98, or NT, it's possible to set up an environment on your own machine that works like the computing environment available on the acpub clusters. This means that you can install a Unix like shell, Emacs, g++, and other tools.
We've tried to make installing this software simple, but it's not completely simple. You'll need to be comfortable with downloading files, using winzip, and installing programs.
We'll update this web page to give more explicit instructions, but for now we'll include links to materials. You should be comfortable installing software or willing to try -- none of these packages require a great deal of technical expertise to install, but they're not completely trivial to install either.
Hopefully we'll create a seamless install package soon, but for now here are the links.
The shell is cygwin from Cygnus software. That link takes you to the main page from which you can follow links to different download sites. However, we've mirrored the files needed for a simple installation.
Some people report errors downloading the mirrored files, if you get an error try this file instead.
When the download has finished you'll be in Winzip. Click the Extract button near the top and when in the little text box sayin "extract to where" type C:\cygwin. This will unpack all the files into a directory C:\cygwin\cyginstall. When the unpacking is done you'll use windows explorer to go to the the C:\cygwin\cyginsall directory and run the setup.exe program.
When it prompts for where to install from, select Install from Current Directory
You can now get rid of the cyginstall subdirectory, it's not needed any longer.
The current cygwin shell comes with g++ 2.95.2, so once you download the shell you're all set with a compiler.
Get the full-binary distribution, that's what is mirrored. Unzip it (automatic if you have winzip set up properly) and extract all the files into a subdirectory named c:\emacs (you can use a different name, but why?).
After extracting run the program bin/addpm.exe in the emacs-20.7 directory. This will add an emacs link to Program menu. Now you're set to go.
You'll see a sequence of compiles and finally libtapestry.a, the library, will be created.
Now you're all set. When you download a Makefile to use with your programs, change the line that specifies COURSE_DIR so that it references the directory in which the .h, .cpp, and libtapestry.a files are located, e.g.,
You may need to leave the c: out, you'll find out if that doesn't work.