Setting up a proper modelling environment in Cygwin

[Eliot Moss]

On 9/10/2020 10:37 PM, Lawrence Bernardo via Cygwin wrote:
> Dear Cygwin users and developers,
> 
> I am trying to run some models based on the ROMS ocean modeling system. And
> although I mainly run such models on Linux supercomputing systems, I
> sometimes use Cygwin to make test runs. However, whenever I install Cygwin
> on a new PC, I often find that my set up on an older PC I had been using
> doesn't work properly. After looking deeper into the issues, it seems that
> proper compilation requires that the same fortran compiler (gfortran in
> this case) be used to compile the necessary components.
> 
> And as far as I understand, these components would mainly be:
> - zlib
> - hdf5
> - netcdf
> - netcdf-fortran
> - openmpi
> 
> As the gfortran compiler version number used for these different components
> is not indicated whenever I run cygwin setup-x86_64.exe, I am left to guess
> which version numbers for each to select. Of course, another option would
> be to accept the defaults for some components, and then compile my own
> version of say, netcdf, but this attempt almost always fails, and I'm not
> sure if this is due to conflicts with the already existing cygwin setup.
> 
> Given the issues above, would anyone have any suggestions or
> recommendations on how to best achieve the setup I would like to have? I
> will greatly appreciate any help.

Not sure if anyone has responded yet ...

You can:

- Install the specific version of gfortran (gcc suite) that you need.
- Build the other things from sources in Cygwin, using the source packages.

There might be rough edges if there are cygwin-specific adjustments that have been
made and they don't quite match the version you want.

There is also the cygwin time machine that you can use to get any old versions.
(I've not used it, but know it exists and sometimes helps folks with situations
like this.)

Regards - Eliot Moss