GRASS ports to Microsoft MS-Windows

winGRASS GIS

GRASS GIS has been successfully ported to MS-Windows (NT, 2000 Professional, XP) with Cygwin extension. Currently (2006-today), also a winGRASS native port has been released as technology preview based on MinGW (NT, 2000 Professional, XP, Vista).

winGRASS GIS mailing list

To coordinate ideas and work on GRASS GIS to MS-Windows, this mailing list has been established. Feel free to subscribe and participate:

winGRASS Mailing List (un)subscription page
winGRASS mailing list archives
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Option 1: winGRASS GIS with Cygwin

GRASS GIS has been ported to MS-Windows (NT, 2000 Professional, XP) using the cygwin tools. The source code is identical to the UNIX version as the GRASS source code is rather platform independent. If you want to compile yourself, we recommend to get the latest GRASS sources from our CVS-Server. For questions, please contact above mailing list.

The graphical output screen (based on XDRIVER) has been the major problem to port GRASS. The system is now working with the XFree86 Server or the StarNet X-Win Server as well as the generic MS-Windows driver.

We are searching for developers and testers to assist in finalizing the GRASS-Windows port: If you are (somewhat) experienced, join the development team to speed up the port. If you have questions or want to discuss the development, please subscribe to the winGRASS mailing list (see above). Before reporting bugs to the list, please visit the bug reporting system and read the manuals and old posts to the mailing lists. See here for reporting bugs. Download pre-compiled winGRASS/Cygwin binaries:

Download precompiled GRASS 6 port to MS-Windows/Cygwin

Notes

NOTE 1: GRASS does not cope (yet) with spaces in directory names. Take this into account when installing GRASS on MS-Windows.
NOTE 2: When selecting the root install directory, make sure that the "Default Text File Type" is set to Unix.
NOTE 3: You must install/compile GRASS on an NTFS partition (FAT will not work!)

Option 2: Native winGRASS GIS (no Cygwin needed)

The GRASS Development Team works on a more "native" port of GRASS to MS-Windows. It is based on the MinGW environment. All changes are integrated into GRASS from version 6.3 onwards.

Compile instructions

Compiling GRASS natively on MS-Windows/MinGW : see Instructions in GRASS Wiki
Compiling GRASS natively on MS-Windows integrated with QGIS: see Building Windows Binary On Linux (Cross compilation with MinGW).

Download pre-compiled winGRASS/MinGW binaries (experimental):

Download winGRASS Installer from wingrass6XX.zip