Re: newbie question....trying hard to get GSL to work under windows

[G L Ingram <g dot l dot ingram at durham dot ac dot uk>]

John,

I'm by no means an expert in all this but you might this useful:-

I've no idea about MATLAB I don't use it.  However I do use the GSL under
windows using cygwin - I imagine the principles are the same:-

When I want to install a GSL installation I download a tar.gz file
from: http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/sources.redhat.com/pub/gsl/

this I then copy to the /home/username directory for cygwin.  The
/home/username directory is found in the windows world as
c:\cygwin\home\username.  There may be a better choice of directory but
that's the one I use.  You should be able to find an analagous
directory for msys.

Having copied the file I push the cygwin icon button thingy this then pops
a window with a command prompt in it.  From there you can navigate to the
/home/username directory.  I then unzip (uncompress) the file using:-

# gzip -d name_of_file

Don't type the "#" it's shorthand for the command prompt.  I then untar
the file using

# tar -xvf name_of_file

This produces a subdirectory called gsl-1.2/ or whatever verison gsl you
have downloaded.  I then cd to this directory if you type
# less install
you should get some installation instructions but basically to get
gsl working type:-

# ./configure
# make
# make install

This process should put the right files in the right place.

In order to get programs working, I simply copied some sample code from
the manual (which I thought was quite good actually) into a file example.c
say, then to get it to compile:

# gcc -o fred example.c -lgsl -lgslcblas -lm
worked for me!

You an then run the program from your command prompt by
# ./fred

Then what I do when running windows is to copy the exe file produced by
all of this to the directory where my data is and you can run from an
MS-DOS prompt without loading up cygwin directly.

This may not help you, or be too simplistic - it's provided in the hope
that it might be useful.  To answer some of your questions:-

> I have downloaded and installed MSYS and mingw32, and have downloaded the
> GNUWin32 version 1.0 of GSL.  But I am stuck.  Where do I place the GSL?  I
> know somewhere it says to place it in the program files path, but the GSL
> documentation says that it belongs in the  /usr/local/include/gsl path,
> which in the windows case I assume would be within the MSYS directory
> structure.  Is that correct?  And whereever I place it, how do I tell
> windows (or MSYS) that it is even there?  Do I need to put it into the
> windows path statement, or some sort of path statement used by MSYS?  Does
> MSYS have some sort of update function when you change directory structures?

The installation procedure should take care of which directory stuff goes
in.

> Next, when compiling a C code, how do I link using the dlls?  Or do I link
> using the libgsl.a files?  I could really use some simple, complete, easy to
> follow instructions on this.  It is very confusing to me, and the manuals
> that came with GSL etc are not of too much help.  I have read the one page
> discussion in the GSL manual many times.  It assumes I know much more than I
> do.  I am just a beginner and would really appreciate some help so that I
> could use GSL.

See above, not sure how you use DLLs though.

> Also, must I use the 1.0 version of GSL on windows or can I compile my own
> so that I can use the latest version?  Is compiling the new version just a
> matter of downloading the source files and issuing the appropriate make
> commands, etc?

You can compile your own as above.

> Must I also download the header files if I want to write a C program that
> uses GSL functions?  What directory should I place them in?  How does MSYS
> or windows know that they are there?

If you follow the instructions above the whole things just works for me...

> Lastly, is WSYS the only interface to mingw32?  It is funny to me, but in
> the web instructions to mingw32 they say to install it and type in some test
> commands.  But where are you to type them in??  Into a dos prompt?  Into the
> WSYS shell?  The web page gives you no clue.  Does mingw32 have its own
> shell?

I'm not sure about MSYS, I think you get a icon on the start menu which
pops up a window with a command prompt in it but don't quote me on that.

I hope that helps!

Regards,

Grant.