Ptolemy NT Overview

These pages describe the Ptolemy port to Windows NT4.0.

The NT port works, but has not been tested extensively. Currently, under NT4.0 with Cygwin (version b20.1), prebuilt Cygnwin X11R6 binaries and an X server, we can run pigi, the Ptolemy Interactive Graphical Interface.

There are two NT ports: nt4 and nt4.vc.

`nt4`

If the PTARCH environment variable is set to nt4, then we build with Cygwin, which is a port of the GNU tools to Windows. nt4 is easier to port because Cygwin allows us to use the Unix GNU makefiles in the regular distribution.

The nt4 port requires that Cygwin be present. The port was done with version b20.1 of Cygwin

The two biggest problems with the nt4 port is that it is slow, and incremental linking of stars is not supported.

`nt4.vc`

If PTARCH is set to nt4.vc, then we use Microsoft Windows Visual C++ 5.0. This port relies on using makefile.vc files which are MS VC++ versions of the usually makefiles.

The nt4.vc port does not yet work, there are problems creating dlls. The nt4.vc port has not been built recently, and probably does not work.

Currently, we can only compile ptcl.ptiny using MSVC++. This port is substantially incomplete. See $PTOLEMY/mk/config-nt4.vc.mk.vc for nt4.vc installation instructions.

Questions

Will these ports work under Windows '95?: We were unable to compile Ptolemy under Windows '95 and Cygwin32 b19.1 without hanging Windows '95 and forcing a reboot.
When will the nt4.vc port be completed?
The nt4 port has higher priority, so after pigi works under nt4, we may start work on the nt4.vc port.

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