All the files, including this one, README.cygwin, necessary for porting metamail-2.7 to Cygwin are contained in the patchfile, patchfile_1.0. All that is necessary after unpacking the metamail-2.7 distribution, is to put the patchfile in the same directory and type.

1) patch -Np1 < patchfile-1.0
2) make
3) make install

If you have problems after typing "make install", it could be because Cygwin forces the ".exe" extension onto executables but Unix does not. If you run into this problem, you can try installing by hand, or you can download my port of the install command included in GNU's fileutils-4.0, which overcomes the problem.

As the port to Cygwin is improved, or bugs are corrected, subsequent patchfiles will have higher numbers. Always apply any patch to the original 2.7 distribution, not to previously patched files.

KNOWN SHORTCOMINGS and LIMITATIONS. The main metamail program compiles and works well under Cygwin. It uses the pager "more" with the -p option. If you want to use another pager such as "less", copy "less" to "more" and put it somewhere in the executable path before any real copy of "more" you might have ("more" does not come with Cygwin).

I have not modified any of the shell scripts that come with metamail except to change "/bin/csh" to "/bin/tcsh". It thus seems unlikely that any of these shell scripts will do what is wanted in the Cygwin environment without further modification. Last modified: Feb 14, 2000 by Mark Schoenberg