These instructions show you how to build FriCAS on MS Windows from the sources
in the git repository.  You may want to consider building FriCAS from a
distribution tarball instead, which contains pregenerated algebra Lisp,
HyperDoc pages and graphic examples.  Moreover, using the tarball the build is
much faster - a few minutes instead of a few hours.  You can get a tarball via
http://fricas.sourceforge.net/download.html

First of all, do not be afraid!  The instructions below probably look more
intimidating than they really should be.  In case something goes wrong, do not
hesitate to ask at fricas-devel@googlegroups.com.

To compile FriCAS on MS Windows, we proceed as follows:

I) If you do not have Cygwin installed, go to

    https://cygwin.com/

    Look for a link called setup-x86_64.exe or setup-x86.exe and save it to disk.
    But 32bit Cygwin is not recommended by upstream.  Following instructions are
    tested in the 64bit version.

II) Start Cygwin's setup program.  The first few questions can be answered with
    the default values, until you get to the "Select Packages" dialog.

    Clicking on a little + will expand the list of packages. You should select
    apart from the defaults the following:

    (DISCLAIMER: this list is likely to be overkill.  Also note that selecting
    will also select many packages they depend on, this should happen
    automatically.)

           In Devel: gcc-core
                     make
                     git
           In X11 (optional):
                   xterm
                   libICE-devel
                   libXpm-devel
                   libSM-devel
                   libX11-devel
                   xinit
                   xorg-x11-fonts-dpi75
           In Editors (optional):
                       emacs
                       emacs-X11

    Complete the Cygwin installation process.

    1) Install a Common Lisp implementation

    Clisp is in the Cygwin repo, it but can not build FriCAS due to the
    "cygwin-no-save-executable.patch".  So we compile ecl from source here.

    Install libgc1 libgc-devel libgmp-devel libffi-devel libatomic_ops1
    libatomic_ops-devel to compile ecl.

  tar xvf ecl-21.2.1.tgz
  cd ecl-21.2.1
  ./configure
  make
  make install

III) start Cygwin - a black console window should appear.  Note that
    it's better *not* to start Cygwin/X, but rather an "ordinary"
    shell.  If the building process is very slow, please consider
    turning off anti-virus software or add Cygwin to its exception list.

    find a place to build FriCAS.

  cd /cygdrive/c
  mkdir scratch
  cd scratch

    (it is essential that the path to scratch does not contain any spaces.
    Otherwise the build won't work...)

IV) follow the instructions in INSTALL (but note that we are going to build
    FriCAS using ecl), that is:

    1) Fetch sources:

  git clone https://github.com/fricas/fricas

    alternatively, download a release version of the source.

    2) create the build directory (again: without spaces!)

  mkdir fri-build
  cd fri-build

    3) configure

  ../fricas/configure --with-lisp=ecl

    4) build

  make -jN

    5) install

  make install

V) You can now start fricas with a comfortable user interface by
    starting a Cygwin/X shell and typing

  efricas

    or, without emacs, using

  fricas
