Installing on Windows [Obsolete] - mtop/speciesgeocoder GitHub Wiki

A few extra programs needs to be installed on a Windows computer to make it run SpeciesGeoCoder. These programs includes a command interpreter, also known as a shell, the programming language Python as well as a number of tools for compiling the GDAL library, that is used for extracting elevation data from geotif files. The Cygwin package provides these programs and an easy way of installing a GNU/Linux-like environment on a Widows computer. This HOWTO describes the installation process of a Cygwin system on Windows XP/Vista/7/.

  • Go to www.cygwin.com and download the binary "setup-x86.exe" (for 32-bit systems) or "setup-x86_64.exe" (for 64 bit systems).
  • Run the downloaded setup program and accept all defaults until the "Choose A Download Site" page appears. Choose a server close to your location and click "next".
  • Ignore the installation alert If this is the first time you install Cygwin on your computer.
  • When the page "Select packages to install" appears, select the following programs (dependencies):

Archive/unzip Devel/gcc-core Devel/gcc-g++ Devel/make Interpreters/python Web/wget Science/R

You may also like to install the following packages (optional and not required by SpeciesGeoCoder):

Editors/vim X11/xinit Devel/git Net/openssh

  • Click "next" twice and sit back while the packages are downloaded and installed on your computer.
  • Click the Cygwin desktop icon and type in the command from the "INSTALL" file distributed with SpeciesGeoCoder.

Moving files to and from Cygwin

In addition to installing Cygwin, you may also want to create a symbolic link to your Cygwin home directory on e.g. your Desktop, where you can place the files needed for your analysis.

  • Right click on the Desktop and select "new/Shortcut"
  • Click "Browse" and use the file manager to find you Cygwin home directory (e.g. C:\cygwin\home\USER, where "USER" is your Cygwin username).
  • Click "next" and give your link a name (e.g. "Cygwin_Home"), then click "Finish".

You can now drag and drop the files you need for your analysis to the newly created shortcut, as well as easily retreving the results after the analysis.