Porting software from Unix to Windows is a difficult task. Fortunately, many of the problems already have been worked out by the Cygwin project. Emmes Technologies' PSTW project was designed to make the porting of Unix programs to Windows as easy as possible.

Initially, I thought I would post many ports here. However, I found that after Cygwin version 1.1, many GNU-supplied programs would compile right out of the box. The programs posted here all required some modification before they would compile under Cygwin. The patches written by me generally contain relatively minor changes to code enabling users to compile the original software under Cygwin.

In only one case, the port of fileutils-4.0, were extensive changes made to the original code to enable the programs to run better, in my opinion, in the Cygwin environment. In this instance, I was careful to enclose all changes between an #ifdef __CYGWIN__ and an #endif, so that the programs should compile and run in a non-Cygwin environment the same as before being patched. I am open for suggestions for improving my ports. They can be implemented with the following steps. I hope you find the procedure easy.

1) Download and unpack the original software, using gzip, gunzip, or tar as appropriate.
2) Download the patchfile with the highest version number and place it in the top directory of the original software. Unpack it with any of the available programs for unpacking zip files, if necessary.
3) While in the top directory of the original software, type "patch -Np1 < patchfile-version".
4) Read the README.cygwin and patchlog files.
5) Type "./configure" (generally the original software comes with directions for using configure).
6) Type "make".
7) Type "make install".