From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 24 2008 - 23:10:27 CST

Wes,
  If you don't need anything other than VMD's plugin system, then really
you don't need to compile VMD at all, and you can simply make a Lua binding
for the VMD plugins themselves.

The "cl.exe" is actually the Microsoft compiler. In order for Cygwin
to find it, you have to have setup the MS compilers in the default path.
When one installs the MS tools, they typically provide a batch file that
one can run that sets up all of the environment variables so that you
can run the MS compilers from command line either with MS's own "nmake"
or from 3rd party compilation tools, IDEs, etc. You'll need to get your
MS compilers setup this way in order to build the plugins from source
using our standard Makefile based builds.

For the MSVC build areas you'll want to use CVS and not the tar archive
of the source tree, as it's not included in the tar archives. If you
were working with the tar archive, that would explain the other half of
the issues you asked about.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 08:56:03PM -0800, Wesley Smith wrote:
> I have VS7 and VS8. I was trying with VS7. That explains some of the
> issues. I do have cygwin but when I tried to make, I got an error
> about a missing cl.exe. Where is that supposed to come from?
>
> Also, in the vms1.8.6 source, I see the msvc folder, but nothing is in
> it. In particular, there is not vs2005 folder.
> thanks,
> wes
>
> On Jan 24, 2008 8:45 PM, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Wes,
> > Which version of MSVC or MSVS are you running? There are two
> > different sets of VMD projects files for windows. The "msvc/winvmd"
> > project area is meant only for MSVC 6.x, and it will not necessarily
> > load into newer revs of MSVS. The other "msvc/vs2005" area should
> > work with the most recent revs of MSVS. They load fine for me, so
> > I'm not sure why you'd be having trouble. The VMD plugins aren't
> > compiled using MS projects, and are instead built using the cygwin
> > tools, so that may be a point of confusion for you. You will need to
> > install the cygwin tools before you build the plugins, and the plugins
> > must be built prior to compiling VMD itself. Let me know if you need
> > help getting your compilation environment bootstrapped. Building on
> > Windows is a little more involved than on the Unix-based platforms.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > John Stone
> > vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 08:18:09PM -0800, Wesley Smith wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > I was attempting a Windows build of some VMD mods I had previously
> > > made on OSX, but I didn't get very far. It seems the VMD 1.8.6 source
> > > download is missing the project files for MSVC in the main vmd source
> > > folder and has a corrupt workspace file in the MSVC plugins folder.
> > > Any chance of getting these files?
> > >
> > > thanks,
> > > wes
> >
> > --
> > NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> > Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> > University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> > Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu Phone: 217-244-3349
> > WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Fax: 217-244-6078
> >

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078