GRASS 5.0 port to Microsoft Windows

winGRASS GIS

GRASS GIS 5.0 has been ported to MS Windows (NT, 2000 Professional, XP)

winGRASS GIS mailing list

To coordinate ideas and work on GRASS GIS to MS-Windows, this mailing list has been established. Feel free to subscribe and participate:

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GRASS GIS 5.0 has been ported to MS Windows (NT, 2000 Professional, XP) using the cygwin tools. The source code is identical to the UNIX version as the GRASS source code is rather platform independent. If you want to compile yourself, we recommend to get the latest GRASS sources from our CVS-Server.

You are encouraged to use this experimental version and assist to identify and help fixing the few bugs still in this version. Following problems are to be addressed in a future release:

stabilize the native windows graphical output window to display maps;
have a native windows menu user interface
get NVIZ working (problem is the limited path support of TclTk for Cygwin).

The graphical output screen (based on XDRIVER) has been the major problem to port GRASS. The system is now working with the XFree86 Server or the StarNet X-Win Server as well as the generic Windows driver. For the menu system (only supported for winGRASS with Xdriver) currently the tcl/tk based tcltkgrass program is used. The native menu system (probably based on tcl/tk or python) will take more time.

We are searching for developers and testers to assist in finalizing the GRASS-Windows port: If you are (somewhat) experienced, join the development team to speed up the port. If you have questions or want to discuss the development, please subscribe to the winGRASS mailing list. Before reporting bugs to the list, please visit the bug reporting system and read the manuals and old posts to the mailing lists. See here for report a bug.

NOTE 1: GRASS does not cope (yet) with spaces in directory names. Take this into account when installing GRASS on MS-Windows.
NOTE 2: When selecting the root install directory, make sure that the "Default Text File Type" is set to Unix.
NOTE 3: You must install/compile GRASS on an NTFS partition (FAT will not work!)

Download pre-compiled winGRASS binaries:

Download precompiled package of the GRASS 5.3 port to Windows We provide two versions:
- winGRASS with Xserver requirement: wingrass_xserver/
- winGRASS without Xserver requirement: wingrass_generic/ (eventually more limited in functionality)
NOTE: Supported are Windows NT (SP 3 or above), Windows 2000 Professional and XP.
Instructions to install the precompiled winGRASS package.
Download precompiled package of the GRASS 5.7 port to Windows [ go here for experimental (but newer) binary versions ]

Download source code (to compile GRASS from scratch on Windows):

Get the latest GRASS 5 sources.
Instructions on how to compile GRASS 5.0 with the cygnus tools.

FAQ (related to Cygwin)