A Unix (mac/Linux) user who has been forced to work on a windows machine here :)
I have scripted loads of work in GnuPlot and don't want to switch to other programs at this moment. I would appreciate it if you could help me know how to install GnuPlot On windows (more specifically windows 10). questions:
I know there are two options according to this page, Cygwin and MinGW. which one is better?
I have MinGW installed and I know I need to install one of the options from this page but I don't know which one(s)! and how.
I have searched the internet but it seems most of the search results are for compiling. I don't want to go through compiling and all the hassle.
I tried installing the binary from this link, and when I try to run the program this is the error I get:
Unable to execute file:
C:\Program Files\gnuplot\bin\wgnuplot.exe
CreatProcess failed; Code267.
The directory name is invalid.
I would appreciate it if you could give me a very simple stepwise installation (1 2 3 ...), preferably with visuals, and instructions.
P.S. A nice way to install Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) on Windows and keep them updated, is to use package managers like Chocolatey. There are GnuPlot chocolatey packages here. Just install choco as instructed here. Then use choco install Gnuplot to have the software installed.
You don't have to install MinGW or Cygwin. Actually packages compiled in MinGW are compatible with Windows. Just download the binary of gnuplot from Their repo and you are good to go.
Additional points:
When installing, check which terminals you want to set up; also
check if you want the installer to add the PATH variable to your
system. Also, create a desktop shortcut.
After installation, you should see the desktop shortcut. Clicking on it should open a terminal-based gnuplot (which hopefully you are familiar with).
Please note that I have used the x11 terminal (you can get this working by installing xming). There are other options such as windows and qt terminals, but I am not an expert on using these.
You should have Administrator rights on this machine.
Right click on MinGW, Run as Administrator, install - should be OK.
Good luck!
BR, Alex
You can try
$~ scoop install gnuplot
Installing 'Gnuplot' (5.4.5) [64bit] from main bucket
gp545-win64-mingw.7z (37.7 MB) [=======================================] 100%
Checking hash of gp545-win64-mingw.7z ... ok.
Extracting gp545-win64-mingw.7z ... done.
Linking ~\scoop\apps\Gnuplot\current => ~\scoop\apps\Gnuplot\5.4.5
Creating shim for 'gnuplot'.
Creating shortcut for GNUPlot (wgnuplot.exe)
'Gnuplot' (5.4.5) was installed successfully!
I am simply trying to set up a dev environment to code on my Windows 10 PC for use alongside my Mac when I need it.
I have installed Bash, Z shell and Node.js.
All I want to do, bare minimum, is simply:
Be able to run npm commands, etc. (npm install X)
Open files with appropriate programs from the terminal. (on Mac, I can run open index.html or atom .)
My problem: Literally no commands work. I can't run node -v, I can't do start index.html, I can't even open the current directory I'm in with explorer.
For every command, I receive an error: zsh: Command not found (:node/start/explorer/etc.)
I am guessing it has something to do with my PATH variables? I'm not sure; I'm relatively new...
Please help - I've spent four hours searching Google, Stack Overflow, page after page, but somehow can't find a solution.
Thanks.
Sounds like you have an 'eco-system challenge'... :)
Perhaps whatever tool you used to install the tools you mention:
did not do a complete install OR
requires a 'reboot' to enable all the goodies?
I suggest using a small footprint Linux OS in a VM for this type of tinkering; there are many challenges in using *nix tools on Windows - better to learn/experiment in a more Bash-friendly environment, and then, when comfy, bring the tool sets to another OS.
If you still want to give things a whirl:
locate your Bash binary
Right-click and select 'run as admin'
then use your favorite online Bash tutorial or book to explore...
:)
Dale
I recently installed railsinstaller on my computer, but have noticed that the installation for git that came with the application is old. I wanted to install it through the git installer, but it never showed me where I would like for the location of git to be at. My other solution is to upgrade it through the command prompt without using the git installer. How do I do this? Which commands would I have to use in the command prompt terminal?
Installing software from the command prompt isn't an easy task on Windows. First, you will need to find out what technology was used to create the installation package. Then you need to download a (UI based) tool which can modify the installation package to stop asking questions and just do what you want. It's certainly possible ... if you can spend a couple of hours or days to find out how.
Now the reason why the git installer isn't asking is probably because it detects an existing install and wants to upgrade it - since the "new" place must be the old place, no question is asked. To "fix" this, you can try to deinstall Git (Control Panel -> Installed Software -> Remove). When you run the installer again, it should give you more options.
If you just want to update the command line tools, you can also try to unpack the installer or install on a second computer. That should give you the git.exe plus all the DLLs and scripts which you can then copy manually. But Git on Windows also install a MINGW environment with a shell and to update that, you probably have to run the installer so it can make the necessary changes to the registry.
I'm following the instructions of someone whose repository I cloned to my machine. I want to use the make command as part of setting up the code environment, but I'm using Windows. I searched online, but I could only find a make.exe file, a make-4.1.tar.gz file (I don't know what to do with it next) and instructions for how to download MinGW (for GNU; but after installing it I didn't find any mention of "make").
How do I use make in Windows without a GNU compiler or related packages?
make is a GNU command so the only way you can get it on Windows is installing a Windows version like the one provided by GNUWin32. Anyway, there are several options for getting that:
The most simple choice is using Chocolatey. First you need to install this package manager. Once installed you simlpy need to install make (you may need to run it in an elevated/admin command prompt) :
choco install make
Other recommended option is installing a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL/WSL2), so you'll have a Linux distribution of your choice embedded in Windows 10 where you'll be able to install make, gccand all the tools you need to build C programs.
For older Windows versions (MS Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista / 2008 / 7 with msvcrt.dll) you can use GnuWin32.
An outdated alternative was MinGw, but the project seems to be abandoned so it's better to go for one of the previous choices.
GNU make is available on chocolatey.
Install chocolatey from here.
Then, choco install make.
Now you will be able to use Make on windows.
I've tried using it on MinGW, but it should work on CMD as well.
The accepted answer is a bad idea in general because the manually created make.exe will stick around and can potentially cause unexpected problems. It actually breaks RubyInstaller: https://github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller2/issues/105
An alternative is installing make via Chocolatey (as pointed out by #Vasantha Ganesh K)
Another alternative is installing MSYS2 from Chocolatey and using make from C:\tools\msys64\usr\bin. If make isn't installed automatically with MSYS2 you need to install it manually via pacman -S make (as pointed out by #Thad Guidry and #Luke).
If you're using Windows 10, it is built into the Linux subsystem feature. Just launch a Bash prompt (press the Windows key, then type bash and choose "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows"), cd to the directory you want to make and type make.
FWIW, the Windows drives are found in /mnt, e.g. C:\ drive is /mnt/c in Bash.
If Bash isn't available from your start menu, here are instructions for turning on that Windows feature (64-bit Windows only):
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
Download make.exe from their official site GnuWin32
In the Download session, click
Complete package, except sources.
Follow the installation instructions.
Once finished, add the <installation directory>/bin/ to the PATH variable.
Now you will be able to use make in cmd.
Install Msys2 http://www.msys2.org
Follow installation instructions
Install make with $ pacman -S make gettext base-devel
Add C:\msys64\usr\bin\ to your path
On windows 10 or 11, you can run the command winget install GnuWin32.Make in the command line or powershell to quickly install it. Than you can use the command cmake.
There is no need to install choco anymore.
The chances are that besides GNU make, you'll also need many of the coreutils. Touch, rm, cp, sed, test, tee, echo and the like. The build system might require bash features, if for nothing else, it's popular to create temp file names from the process ID ($$$$). That won't work without bash. You can get everything with the popular POSIX emulators for Windows:
Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.org/) Probably the most popular one and the most compatible with POSIX. Has some difficulties with Windows paths and it's slow.
GNUWin (http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/) It was good and fast but now abandoned. No bash provided, but it's possible to use it from other packages.
ezwinports (https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports) My current favorite. Fast and works well. There is no bash provided with it, that can be a problem for some build systems. It's possible to use make from ezwinports and bash from Cygwin or MSYS2 as a workaround.
MSYS 1.19 abandoned. Worked well but featured very old make (3.86 or so)
MSYS2 (https://www.msys2.org/) Works well, second fastest solution after ezwinports. Good quality, package manager (pacman), all tooling available. I'd recommend this one.
MinGW abandoned? There was usually MSYS 1.19 bundled with MinGW packages, that contained an old make.exe. Use mingw32-make.exe from the package, that's more up to date.
Note that you might not be able to select your environment. If the build system was created for Cygwin, it might not work in other environments without modifications (The make language is the same, but escaping, path conversion are working differently, $(realpath) fails on Windows paths, DOS bat files are started as shell scripts and many similar issues). If it's from Linux, you might need to use a real Linux or WSL.
If the compiler is running on Linux, there is no point in installing make for Windows, because you'll have to run both make and the compiler on Linux. In the same way, if the compiler is running on Windows, WSL won't help, because in that environment you can only execute Linux tools, not Windows executables. It's a bit tricky!
I could suggest a step by step approach.
Visit GNUwin
Download the Setup Program
Follow the instructions and install GNUWin. You should pay attention to the directory where your application is being installed. (You will need it later1)
Follow these instructions and add make to your environment variables. As I told you before, now it is time to know where your application was installed.
FYI: The default directory is C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\.
Now, update the PATH to include the bin directory of the newly installed program.
A typical example of what one might add to the path is: ...;C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin
Another alternative is if you already installed minGW and added the bin folder the to Path environment variable, you can use "mingw32-make" instead of "make".
You can also create a symlink from "make" to "mingw32-make", or copying and changing the name of the file. I would not recommend the options before, they will work until you do changes on the minGW.
I once had the same problem. But I am surprised not to find one particular solution here.
Installation from GnuWin32 or via winget are good and easy options. But I only found make 3.8.1 there. This version lacks the very important option -O, which handles the output correctly when compiling multithreaded.
choco appears to offer make 4.3, currently. So one could expect recent versions there.
But there is also the option of self compiling. And if you have to install make, which is used for compiling, this should be a valid option.
head to https://www.gnu.org/software/make/ and download a version of your liking
unpack the tar.gz files (use 7zip and unpack the file twice to retrieve the actual content)
navigate to the created directory
open command prompt in that directory
run build_w32.bat gcc This will start the compilation with the gcc compiler, which you would need to install in advance. When running build_w32.bat without any option they try to use the MSVC compiler. Sidenote: I found it surprising that gnu does not use gcc as default but MSVC :-)
ignore the warnings created during compilation. The result should still be fine
retrieve your fresh gnumake.exe from the directoy GccRel (when compiled with gcc)
put this file somewhere where you like and rename to make.exe
add the location to the system variable %PATH%
As others have noted: This manual installation might cause conflicts if you have various make versions installed by other programs as well.
You can also install scoop, then run:
scoop install make
One solution that may helpful if you want to use the command line emulator cmder. You can install the package installer chocately. First we install chocately in windows command prompt using the following line:
#"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"
refreshenv
After chocolatey is installed the choco command can be used to install make. Once installed, you will need add an alias to /cmder/config/user_aliases.cmd. The following line should be added:
make="path_to_chocolatey\chocolatey\bin\make.exe" $*
Make will then operate in the cmder environment.
Install npm
install Node
Install Make
node install make up
node install make
If above commands displays any error then install Chocolatey(choco)
Open cmd and copy and paste the below command (command copied from chocolatey URL)
#"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command " [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"
I have researched this and found answers on SO on this topic yet remain confused.
Trying to get started with Git. I'm new to shell scripting too so hopefully after this I'll be more familiar with it.
I'm reading this page about how to get up and running with Git: http://git-scm.com/book/en/Getting-Started-Installing-Git
I created a directory on my desktop called "git" and navigated to it in the terminal. With my level of experience in shell scripting this was a victory. Then, following a blog post on how to download fromt he terminal ran this command:
curl -O http://git-scm.com/download
That worked, or at least a new file was added to the "git" directory that I created.
Reading down the instructions one is told that "To install Git, you need to have the following libraries that Git depends on: curl, zlib, openssl, expat, and libiconv"
OK. Um. How? I did read some blog posts and SO answers on how to do this but failed. The first one for example - type zlib and hit enter - command not found? How do I either check if it's already installed or how do I install it? What about the others?
I tried following this blog post: http://www.neuraladvance.com/using-open-source-libraries-on-mac-os-x.html
I typed:
./configure
make
sudo make install
Wasn't even sure what to expect. The first two commands said not found the last one asked me for a password.
I then tried ./configure --help
Was then told "No such file or directory"
Needless to say I don't know what to do next. How do I install the libraries on a Mac using the terminal? curl, zlib, openssl, expat, and libiconv
I'm pretty sure all those libraries are preinstalled on your Mac.
If not, installing Xcode (free on the AppStore) would do the trick.
Xcode actually comes with git (but not the latest version) so if you install Xcode you don't need to install git separately.
To answer your question more generally, you might want to install Homebrew.
It's a command line tool to install software and libraries and it's pretty easy to use.
It's great that you are discovering the shell. You should read some tutorials for beginners. If you like it, you will learn very fast and in a few weeks, you will understand exactly why the command you tried didn't work. Have fun learning!
As Simon suggested you should install Xcode, however the CLI tools are not installed automatically. They must be downloaded through Xcode's, preferences. In Preferences click the Downloads tab then install next to Command Line Tools.
If any of the required tools are not automatically installed with Xcode, Homebrew is a great, easy to use, utility that can install nearly any UNIX or Linux command with the following syntax:
brew install <SomeAppName>
The Homebrew website has easy to follow instructions for setting it up initially. So if anything you need is missing try using that.
In Xcode 5, to download Command Line Tools, choose Open Developer Tool under "Xcode", then More Developer Tools> from the sub Menu. This takes you to an Apple web page - you'll need a Developer username/password to get to the Downloads page.
Choose the right CLT for your system, download and install from the dmg/pkg.