WinGRASS 6 Current Status: Difference between revisions

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This page describes the current status of winGRASS development.  Precompiled winGRASS/Cygwin packages are available [http://grass.itc.it/grass62/binary/mswindows/ here], native winGRASS packages are [http://moritz.homelinux.org/grass/wingrass/ here].
This page describes the current status of winGRASS 6 development as of mid-2013


== Compilation ==
* '''[http://grass.osgeo.org/download/software/ms-windows/ Lastest binary downloads]'''


(based on work from Paul Kelly - [http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass-dev/2006-December/027998.html his message])
* ''Older precompiled winGRASS/[[Cygwin]] packages are available for [http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/binary/mswindows/cygwin/ GRASS 6.4], ''


Mostly on compiling the accompanying libraries GRASS absolutely needs:
== Current status - Summary ==
XDR, Zlib, libpng, PROJ.4, GDAL.


They are available in a gzipped tar file in case anybody would like to get started quickly: http://www.stjohnspoint.co.uk/grass/ (get wingrass-extralibs.tar.gz).
The native windows port of GRASS is slowly coming to a stage where it can be considered mature beta status. All main functions seem to work, but much more testing is needed. The port is of the current SVN release branch 6 for GRASS 6.4. The only prior native port of an earlier version is 6.3.0.
In this case you would just need Msys, Mingw with bison and flex.
The prefix where you untar that file you will need to supply to the GRASS configure as:


      --with-includes=prefix --with-libs=prefix
The general idea is to reach a point where GRASS runs in MS-Windows without any kind of UNIX emulation. Currently this is possible but limits the use to compiled modules, as scripts are all of UNIX-shell type and cannot run within a Windows cmd.exe environment without a series of UNIX tools such as a shell, awk, sed, etc. So in order to run such scripts a collection of UNIX-like tools needs to be installed, such as Msys or Gnuwin32+Shell.


Another major feature not available in the MS-Windows version are the old-style interactive X monitors (i.e. the x0 monitors opened with '<tt>{{cmd|d.mon}}&nbsp;x0</tt>'). Only direct rendering works currently. Display is thus "limited" to the [[WxGUI|wxPython]] and Tcl/Tk GUIs. Modules like {{cmd|i.points}} and {{cmd|d.zoom}} will not work due to their interactive monitor requirements (see [[#Known_Issues]]).


Before compilation, you need to set your path in msys in order to
== Installing binary snapshots ==
add the path to the lib/ and bin/ directories of Paul's tarball before
compiling. You might also need to edit the first few lines of the gdal-config script in the bin/ directory, to reflect the path where it is actually installed.


You also have to erase $(MANDIR) $(MANPAGES) from line 13 of man/Makefile, i.e. 'default: $(MANDIR) $(MANPAGES)' -> 'default:'.
Regular binary snapshots for Windows are available from the main GRASS [http://grass.osgeo.org/download/software/ms-windows/ download page].


If you get an error such as 'cannot open file `/msys/share/bison/m4sugar/m4sugar.m4': No such file or directory', one solution is to move around the msys bison installation a bit, so that m4sugar.m4 is available in the indicated path.
== Compiling by yourself ==


A working configure line is:
=== Guide ===
      ./configure --prefix=c:/grass --bindir=c:/grass/bin \
      --with-includes=/c/grass/forgrass/include \
      --with-libs=/c/grass/forgrass/lib --with-cxx --without-jpeg --without-tiff \
      --without-postgres --with-opengl=windows --without-fftw --without-x \
      --enable-x11=no --enable-shared=yes --with-tcltk-includes=/c/tcl/include \
      --with-tcltk-libs=/c/tcl/bin


After compiling you should copy libxdr.dll, libproj.dll, libpng.dll, libgdal-1.dll and libz.dll.1.2.3 into the GRASS lib directory and all the GDAL and PROJ .exe files in the bin directory into the GRASS bin directory, and then you have a more or less self-contained GRASS distribution.
All the information needed for compiling yourself can be found in '''''[http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/CompileOnWindows Compiling GRASS on MS-Windows]'''''


You can also install Activestate Tcl/Tk 8.4.13 (in c:\tcl).
See also '''[http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/BuildingOnWindows BuildingOnWindows]'''


== What is missing? ==


=== Vector ===
=== Nullsoft installer ===
* <strike>v.digit: implement as pure tcl</strike> (Glynn)
* <strike>Vector-DB connection</strike>:
** This has been solved for now by compiling XDRlib as a static library
** M Lennert: I had hoped that Radim's patch for dbmi_client (http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2006-December/028118.html) might solve the issue I've had with the db protocol errors, but apparently this is not the case. When I push the 'show the attribute columns' in a vector panel, I still get
<pre>
*******
Displaying column types/names for database connection of layer 1:
dbmi: Protocol error
Cannot open table <streams>
********


and a 'v.db.select' on the same map gives me:
See http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/browser/grass/branches/develbranch_6/mswindows


********
[[Image:Wingrass63 installer1.jpg|220px|New winGRASS installer 1]]
'vector/streams' was found in more mapsets (also found in user1).
[[Image:Wingrass63 installer2.jpg|220px|New winGRASS installer 2]]
dbmi: Protocol error
[[Image:Wingrass63 installer3.jpg|220px|New winGRASS installer 3]]


Cannot open select cursor
* Note the "Important Microsoft Runtime Libraries" option. Some of the software which ships with GRASS will not run if these system libraries are not already present, and unfortuantely Microsoft does not install them by default, you need to install the .Net framework or Visual C++ compiler runtime support to get them. These libraries are not part of GRASS but we give the user the opportunity to download and install them during the install if they are needed. Typically a computer with a lot of software already installed may have them, a new computer is likely to be missing them. If they are not installed the symptom is that the GRASS window momentarily flashes on the screen then disappears at start up, closing before you can see the error message.
*********
: See [[#Platform specific issues]] below for more details and download links.
</pre>
* P Kelly:  I can confirm similar problems. I tried to import a Shapefile with v.in.ogr. I went quite deep into debugging it and got nowhere at all, although I should have taken better notes. I did confirm though that compiling the library with -mwindows as Radim suggested on the list made no difference either. I think trying with a different database, PostgreSQL perhaps is the next big step to debugging this. See if the behaviour is the same as with dbf and if not we can isolate it a bit more.
* Moritz: [http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass-dev/2007-February/029149.html followup on DB issue]: ... using db.select as the test case, the error seems to happen around a call to xdr_int() in lib/db/dbmi_base/xdrstring.c....
* Moritz: [http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass-dev/2007-February/029367.html followup 2 on DB issue]
* Moritz: [http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass-dev/2007-February/029373.html followup 3 on DB issue]
* Paul: [http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass-dev/2007-February/029376.html followup 4 on DB issue]
* Glynn: [http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass-dev/2007-February/029378.html followup 5 on DB issue]
* Glynn: [http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass-dev/2007-February/029380.html followup 6 on DB issue]


=== Display ===
== Known Issues  ==
* Display drivers: socket
** Use gis.m instead of monitors.
** Make gis.m Output window more like xterm. No need to hit Run.
** Is there any way that the Map Display in gis.m can interact with console commands? IPC? File Alteration Monitor?


=== Imagery ===
See also
* i.class: SIGALRM, SIGTSTP (are these signals important?)
* [[WinGRASS errors]] - Questions and answers for users
* wait() in:
* [https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/CompileOnWindows#Errata WinGrass current bug list]
** i.ortho.photo/photo.2image: wait()
** i.ortho.photo/photo.2target: wait()
** i.points: wait()
** i.vpoints: wait()
** Note: also in lib/gis/popen.c and lib/gis/system.c (use those implementations?)


=== Raster ===
=== General ===
* r.terraflow: getrusage()
** check this octave patch [http://osdir.com/ml/gnu.octave.maintainers/2006-03/msg00083.html email thread] (check thread msgs)


== Known problems ==
* '''Spaces in path names'''
** GIS data directory: It is generally safe to have spaces in your GIS data directory path, but there are few spots where it might still get confused and chop the path off at the first space. If you find one please report it to the bug tracker, the sooner we know about it the sooner we can fix it.
: Workaround: if this is causing problems for you the quick solution is to rename the GIS data directory and replace all spaces with underscores (_).


* metacharacter escape in "sh -c '$cmd'"
* The '''{{cmd|d.mon}}''' X monitors won't work. These use UNIX pipes and won't work on Windows without a lot of work.
* modules not working: r.proj (v.proj too?), r.surf.rst, v.neighbors, v.kernel, r.cost
: Solution: use {{cmd|d.mon|version=70}} wx0 or the wxGUI ([http://wingrass.fsv.cvut.cz/grass70/ winGRASS 7])
* Cannot open Help pages.
 
* Have to add c:\mingw\bin to PATH on some systems.
=== Won't fix (at least not immediately) ===
** You should have typed c:/mingw instead of c:\mingw when asked by the MinGW installer.
 
* Have to type "exit" in the console to save ~/.grassrc file. Then, close gis.m to finish the session.
Issues listed here are rather impossible to fix due to the different nature of native Windows. Or, lend us a hand and let's try harder!
* A previous installation of grass under cygwin is likely to cause problems with WinGrass. Follow the directions to remove cygwin at http://cygwin.com/faq/faq-nochunks.html#faq.setup.uninstall-all
 
* No X monitors in winGRASS 6:
 
This means that you cannot launch any monitor launched with d.mon (x0, PNG, PS, etc). The only way you can render is directly to a file. But you cannot directly display to screen from the command line. This will be solved in GRASS 7 with a new rendering system and possibly via the new wxgrass GUI. So no work will probably be put into this until then.
 
The absence of monitors also makes impossible the use of interactive modules based on these monitors, such as:
 
** i.class. However, it has been integrated into GRASS 7's wxGUI as {{cmd|g.gui.iclass|version=70}} ([http://wingrass.fsv.cvut.cz/grass70/ winGRASS 7])
** i.ortho.photo/photo.2image
** i.ortho.photo/photo.2target
** i.points
** i.vpoints
 
i.points and i.vpoints have already been replaced by the {{cmd|g.gui.gcp|version=70}} georectifier module (File -> Georectify).
'''Volunteers needed''' for i.ortho.* GUI.
 
Another module affected is d.vect.thematic which uses monitors. This will hopefully be replaced by a C-version in a not too far future.
 
* Scripts need *nix-like shell
 
All current GRASS 6.4 scripts are written in shell language. This means they need a shell, and several related tools (awk, sed, etc), to function. The actual WinGrass 6.4-installer includes Msys, so all shell-scripts should work.
 
In 7.0, these scripts have been rewritten in Python, thus totally eliminating the need for any shell, see [[WinGRASS 7 Current Status]] and [https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass7/NewFeatures GRASS GIS 7 - New Features].
 
=== Missing modules ===
 
* The r.le landscape modelling suite:
** r.le.setup, r.le.trace: not ported yet
: Solution: use r.li.*
** r.le.pixel, r.le.patch: available
* Some GUI helper scripts such as g.change.gui.py and v.type.py
** v.type => in the wx-command-line choice confusion of v.type, 1x v.type_wrapper.py and 3x v.type_wrapper.sh
** v.type_wrapper.py crashes
* The wxnviz 3D visualization module for the new wxGUI. Use NVIZ available from the old Tcl/Tk GIS.m GUI instead.
: use [http://wingrass.fsv.cvut.cz/grass70/ winGRASS 7]
* v.out.gpsbabel fails to start m.proj although present
: Use v.out.gps
* i.ortho.photo => greyed out, requires xterm unavailable in MS-Windows
: Work in progress in winGRASS7
* i.class => greyed out, requires xterm unavailable in MS-Windows
: integrated into GRASS 7's wxGUI as {{cmd|g.gui.iclass|version=70}} ([http://wingrass.fsv.cvut.cz/grass70/ winGRASS 7])
* r.digit => greyed out, requires xterm unavailable in MS-Windows
 
=== Platform specific issues ===
==== XP/2000 ====
 
If the GRASS GUI startup fails with "[Error 14001]" in the MSys terminal on a relatively fresh install of XP, the solution is to install some missing DLL files from Microsoft which apparently don't come standard.
If these library files are missing, [http://www.qgis.org Quantum GIS] and other software from the [http://osgeo4w.osgeo.org OSGeo4W] stack will likely encounter the same trouble as well.
 
You'll need to install a number of packages: (in order)
 
* MS's Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable (v2)
: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=25
 
* MS's .net framework 3.5 downloader
: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=21
 
* MS's Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package:
: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=5555
 
It is recommended to run Windows updates after installing these.
 
==== Windows7 ====
 
* <font size="+1">Missing MSVCR71.dll or MSVCP100.dll library causes GRASS to <font color="#aa2200">exit immediately upon startup</font></font>.
: For the solution, see [[WinGRASS errors]]
 
=== ToDo ===
 
==== Dependencies ====
 
===== GRASS Dependencies =====
 
* add the FFMPEG support in GRASS (reports an error in building OGSF library; probably needs to specify -lavutil in gcc command) ***
 
===== Non-Free GDAL Plugins =====
 
(''can't be shipped as part of the GRASS package directly due to various levels of non-freeness, but can be made into user-installable plugins'')
 
* ECW support in GDAL */**
* JPEG2000 support in GDAL (through Jasper or Kadaku *) **
* OGDI support in GDAL *
* MrSID support in GDAL */**
 
===== GRASS and GDAL Dependencies =====
 
* add the Xerces support in both GDAL and GRASS *
* add the ODBC support in both GDAL and GRASS */**
* add the MySQL support in both GDAL and GRASS */**
 
===== Miscellaneus Dependencies =====
 
* add the OpenSSL support in both PostgreSQL and SQLite *
 
<br>
<nowiki>*</nowiki> needs to build related libraries from source in MinGW
<br>
<nowiki>**</nowiki> needs to check the licences first
<br>
<nowiki>***</nowiki> FFMPEG has been already succesfully built on MinGW
 
==== Internal Libraries ====
 
* parser: find out why launching a module from the command line without parameters does not call module GUI
 
==== Vector modules ====
 
* v.in.ascii crashes on files with irregular line length (see [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2008-February/035268.html this thread]) - still true, 2014?
 
==== Raster modules ====
 
* The [[wxGUI]] has an issue when trying to run {{cmd|r.mapcalc}} with the <tt>||</tt> "or" operator from the wxGUI built-in command entry box on the command console tab of the Layer Manager. You can work around this by running r.mapcalc using the Map Calculator GUI, or from a real command line (in that case remember to "quote" the expression).
 
* The same wxGUI built-in command entry box on the command console tab requires file names with paths to be fully "quoted", e.g. ''input="C:\data\positions.csv"'', or else the "\" characters are lost.


The following items cannot be fixed in the near future:
==== GRASS 6 Addons ====
* Cannot display a thematic layer.
* Not all the GRASS [[Addons]] are available from the [[wxGUI]] extension manager. Problems still exist with running Python scripts. The command line version of {{cmd|g.extension}} requires the full [[osgeo4w]] build environment, which is not installed on most Windows users' computers, so you need to use the pre-built downloads from the wxGUI extension tool. The wxGUI manager will download the nightly pre-built Addon executables ([http://wingrass.fsv.cvut.cz/grass64/addons/ Status of winGRASS 6 Addons] availability).
** d.vect.thematic requires PNG driver, which is not available in winGRASS.
** can't read "_data(.gronsole.gronsole,4,donecmd)": no such element in array error
** Aqua TclTk solution: http://intevation.de/rt/webrt?serial_num=5096&display=History


== TclTk issues ==
==== Tcl/Tk issues ====


* cannot run shell scripts: only .com, .exe, .bat
** sh -c '$cmd'
* var=val style argument is not valid for batch files: equal sign is a separator like a space. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=71247 http://www.gatago.com/alt/msdos/batch/17358926.html
* var=val style argument is not valid for batch files: equal sign is a separator like a space. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=71247 http://www.gatago.com/alt/msdos/batch/17358926.html
** <strike>need .exe wrapper for shell scripts? grass-xterm-wrapper.exe</strike>
** Could you give an example of where this is a problem ?
** We now have .bat wrappers for each shell script, which run the shell specified by the GRASS_SH environment variable and pass the full path to the script to it
* file command returns bad code (catch is needed): http://sources.redhat.com/ml/insight/2003-q1/msg00079.html
* file command returns bad code (catch is needed): http://sources.redhat.com/ml/insight/2003-q1/msg00079.html
** catch {file copy}
** catch {file copy}
** catch {file delete}
** catch {file delete}
** catch {file rename -force} does not work. Delete old file first: catch {file delete}; catch {file rename}
** catch {file rename -force} does not work. Delete old file first: catch {file delete}; catch {file rename}
* <strike>file redirection (>@stdout, 2>@stderr) does not work: http://wiki.tcl.tk/672</strike>
** Worked around by using a small C-program (grocat.exe) to combine stdout and stderr
** exec a batch file doing redirection (>&2, 2>&1)
** exec a batch file doing redirection (>&2, 2>&1)
* no -permissions file attributes
* no -permissions file attributes
** catch {file attributes -permissions}
** catch {file attributes -permissions}
==== Miscellaneous ====
* metacharacter escape in "sh -c '$cmd'"
* Have to type "exit" in the console to save ~/.grassrc file. Then, close gis.m to finish the session.
* A previous installation of grass under cygwin is likely to cause problems with WinGrass. Follow the directions to remove cygwin at http://cygwin.com/faq/faq-nochunks.html#faq.setup.uninstall-all
== Dealing with shell scripts or .bat files ==
Bourne shell scripts require MSys (or some other Bourne shell), but you don't need to start GRASS from MSys.
The main issue with scripts is that Windows doesn't understand the "#!" notation used to specify the interpreter.
All of the supplied scripts in $GISBASE/scripts have a corresponding .bat file in $GISBASE/bin which invokes script via %GRASS_SH%. This allows you to run those scripts from the Windows command prompt.
If you write scripts of your own, you need to either add a corresponding .bat file, or give the script a .sh extension and associate that with the shell, e.g. via the ftype and assoc commands. You can use the PATHEXT variable to eliminate the need to type the extension.


== Other libraries ==
== Other libraries ==
Line 125: Line 208:
* lib/gis/OBJ.*/fmode.o is needed for any GRASS related modules.
* lib/gis/OBJ.*/fmode.o is needed for any GRASS related modules.
* modified ltmain.sh to install binary files from wrapper scripts.
* modified ltmain.sh to install binary files from wrapper scripts.
* see also [http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/BuildingWithMinGW GDAL Building With MinGW]
== Related efforts ==
* http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/pkg-grass
== See also ==
* [[WinGRASS errors]] - Questions and answers for users


[[Category: Development]]
[[Category: Development]]
[[Category: WinGRASS]]

Latest revision as of 21:19, 19 August 2014

This page describes the current status of winGRASS 6 development as of mid-2013

Current status - Summary

The native windows port of GRASS is slowly coming to a stage where it can be considered mature beta status. All main functions seem to work, but much more testing is needed. The port is of the current SVN release branch 6 for GRASS 6.4. The only prior native port of an earlier version is 6.3.0.

The general idea is to reach a point where GRASS runs in MS-Windows without any kind of UNIX emulation. Currently this is possible but limits the use to compiled modules, as scripts are all of UNIX-shell type and cannot run within a Windows cmd.exe environment without a series of UNIX tools such as a shell, awk, sed, etc. So in order to run such scripts a collection of UNIX-like tools needs to be installed, such as Msys or Gnuwin32+Shell.

Another major feature not available in the MS-Windows version are the old-style interactive X monitors (i.e. the x0 monitors opened with 'd.mon x0'). Only direct rendering works currently. Display is thus "limited" to the wxPython and Tcl/Tk GUIs. Modules like i.points and d.zoom will not work due to their interactive monitor requirements (see #Known_Issues).

Installing binary snapshots

Regular binary snapshots for Windows are available from the main GRASS download page.

Compiling by yourself

Guide

All the information needed for compiling yourself can be found in Compiling GRASS on MS-Windows

See also BuildingOnWindows


Nullsoft installer

See http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/browser/grass/branches/develbranch_6/mswindows

New winGRASS installer 1 New winGRASS installer 2 New winGRASS installer 3

  • Note the "Important Microsoft Runtime Libraries" option. Some of the software which ships with GRASS will not run if these system libraries are not already present, and unfortuantely Microsoft does not install them by default, you need to install the .Net framework or Visual C++ compiler runtime support to get them. These libraries are not part of GRASS but we give the user the opportunity to download and install them during the install if they are needed. Typically a computer with a lot of software already installed may have them, a new computer is likely to be missing them. If they are not installed the symptom is that the GRASS window momentarily flashes on the screen then disappears at start up, closing before you can see the error message.
See #Platform specific issues below for more details and download links.

Known Issues

See also

General

  • Spaces in path names
    • GIS data directory: It is generally safe to have spaces in your GIS data directory path, but there are few spots where it might still get confused and chop the path off at the first space. If you find one please report it to the bug tracker, the sooner we know about it the sooner we can fix it.
Workaround: if this is causing problems for you the quick solution is to rename the GIS data directory and replace all spaces with underscores (_).
  • The d.mon X monitors won't work. These use UNIX pipes and won't work on Windows without a lot of work.
Solution: use d.mon wx0 or the wxGUI (winGRASS 7)

Won't fix (at least not immediately)

Issues listed here are rather impossible to fix due to the different nature of native Windows. Or, lend us a hand and let's try harder!

  • No X monitors in winGRASS 6:

This means that you cannot launch any monitor launched with d.mon (x0, PNG, PS, etc). The only way you can render is directly to a file. But you cannot directly display to screen from the command line. This will be solved in GRASS 7 with a new rendering system and possibly via the new wxgrass GUI. So no work will probably be put into this until then.

The absence of monitors also makes impossible the use of interactive modules based on these monitors, such as:

    • i.class. However, it has been integrated into GRASS 7's wxGUI as g.gui.iclass (winGRASS 7)
    • i.ortho.photo/photo.2image
    • i.ortho.photo/photo.2target
    • i.points
    • i.vpoints

i.points and i.vpoints have already been replaced by the g.gui.gcp georectifier module (File -> Georectify). Volunteers needed for i.ortho.* GUI.

Another module affected is d.vect.thematic which uses monitors. This will hopefully be replaced by a C-version in a not too far future.

  • Scripts need *nix-like shell

All current GRASS 6.4 scripts are written in shell language. This means they need a shell, and several related tools (awk, sed, etc), to function. The actual WinGrass 6.4-installer includes Msys, so all shell-scripts should work.

In 7.0, these scripts have been rewritten in Python, thus totally eliminating the need for any shell, see WinGRASS 7 Current Status and GRASS GIS 7 - New Features.

Missing modules

  • The r.le landscape modelling suite:
    • r.le.setup, r.le.trace: not ported yet
Solution: use r.li.*
    • r.le.pixel, r.le.patch: available
  • Some GUI helper scripts such as g.change.gui.py and v.type.py
    • v.type => in the wx-command-line choice confusion of v.type, 1x v.type_wrapper.py and 3x v.type_wrapper.sh
    • v.type_wrapper.py crashes
  • The wxnviz 3D visualization module for the new wxGUI. Use NVIZ available from the old Tcl/Tk GIS.m GUI instead.
use winGRASS 7
  • v.out.gpsbabel fails to start m.proj although present
Use v.out.gps
  • i.ortho.photo => greyed out, requires xterm unavailable in MS-Windows
Work in progress in winGRASS7
  • i.class => greyed out, requires xterm unavailable in MS-Windows
integrated into GRASS 7's wxGUI as g.gui.iclass (winGRASS 7)
  • r.digit => greyed out, requires xterm unavailable in MS-Windows

Platform specific issues

XP/2000

If the GRASS GUI startup fails with "[Error 14001]" in the MSys terminal on a relatively fresh install of XP, the solution is to install some missing DLL files from Microsoft which apparently don't come standard. If these library files are missing, Quantum GIS and other software from the OSGeo4W stack will likely encounter the same trouble as well.

You'll need to install a number of packages: (in order)

  • MS's Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable (v2)
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=25
  • MS's .net framework 3.5 downloader
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=21
  • MS's Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=5555

It is recommended to run Windows updates after installing these.

Windows7

  • Missing MSVCR71.dll or MSVCP100.dll library causes GRASS to exit immediately upon startup.
For the solution, see WinGRASS errors

ToDo

Dependencies

GRASS Dependencies
  • add the FFMPEG support in GRASS (reports an error in building OGSF library; probably needs to specify -lavutil in gcc command) ***
Non-Free GDAL Plugins

(can't be shipped as part of the GRASS package directly due to various levels of non-freeness, but can be made into user-installable plugins)

  • ECW support in GDAL */**
  • JPEG2000 support in GDAL (through Jasper or Kadaku *) **
  • OGDI support in GDAL *
  • MrSID support in GDAL */**
GRASS and GDAL Dependencies
  • add the Xerces support in both GDAL and GRASS *
  • add the ODBC support in both GDAL and GRASS */**
  • add the MySQL support in both GDAL and GRASS */**
Miscellaneus Dependencies
  • add the OpenSSL support in both PostgreSQL and SQLite *


* needs to build related libraries from source in MinGW
** needs to check the licences first
*** FFMPEG has been already succesfully built on MinGW

Internal Libraries

  • parser: find out why launching a module from the command line without parameters does not call module GUI

Vector modules

  • v.in.ascii crashes on files with irregular line length (see this thread) - still true, 2014?

Raster modules

  • The wxGUI has an issue when trying to run r.mapcalc with the || "or" operator from the wxGUI built-in command entry box on the command console tab of the Layer Manager. You can work around this by running r.mapcalc using the Map Calculator GUI, or from a real command line (in that case remember to "quote" the expression).
  • The same wxGUI built-in command entry box on the command console tab requires file names with paths to be fully "quoted", e.g. input="C:\data\positions.csv", or else the "\" characters are lost.

GRASS 6 Addons

  • Not all the GRASS Addons are available from the wxGUI extension manager. Problems still exist with running Python scripts. The command line version of g.extension requires the full osgeo4w build environment, which is not installed on most Windows users' computers, so you need to use the pre-built downloads from the wxGUI extension tool. The wxGUI manager will download the nightly pre-built Addon executables (Status of winGRASS 6 Addons availability).

Tcl/Tk issues

Miscellaneous

  • metacharacter escape in "sh -c '$cmd'"
  • Have to type "exit" in the console to save ~/.grassrc file. Then, close gis.m to finish the session.
  • A previous installation of grass under cygwin is likely to cause problems with WinGrass. Follow the directions to remove cygwin at http://cygwin.com/faq/faq-nochunks.html#faq.setup.uninstall-all

Dealing with shell scripts or .bat files

Bourne shell scripts require MSys (or some other Bourne shell), but you don't need to start GRASS from MSys.

The main issue with scripts is that Windows doesn't understand the "#!" notation used to specify the interpreter.

All of the supplied scripts in $GISBASE/scripts have a corresponding .bat file in $GISBASE/bin which invokes script via %GRASS_SH%. This allows you to run those scripts from the Windows command prompt.

If you write scripts of your own, you need to either add a corresponding .bat file, or give the script a .sh extension and associate that with the shell, e.g. via the ftype and assoc commands. You can use the PATHEXT variable to eliminate the need to type the extension.

Other libraries

GDAL

  • lib/gis/OBJ.*/fmode.o is needed for any GRASS related modules.
  • modified ltmain.sh to install binary files from wrapper scripts.
  • see also GDAL Building With MinGW

Related efforts

See also