How to install ratpoison with Cygwin

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http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2007/07/ratpoison-with-cygwin-works/

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Running the minimalist ratpoison window manager with Cygwin/X works. You will need to install the following Cygwin packages:

gcc-core
make
readline
xorg-x11-base
xorg-x11-devel

Here is how to install:

1. Download ratpoison

2. $ tar xvfz ratpoison-1.4.2.tar.gz
   $ cd ratpoison-1.4.2
   $ ./configure
   $ make
   $ make install

3. Put the following lines in your startxwin.bat file (and remove the other old %RUN% commands):

   %RUN% XWin -rootless -clipboard -silent-dup-error
   %RUN% /usr/local/bin/ratpoison

4. Run the startxwin.bat file

UPDATE 11/08/2007:

When I installed this the first time, I had no problems. The second time I installed, after getting a new PC, I got the following error message when running configure:

configure: error: *** Can't find X11 headers and libs

I thought the reason was because I forgot to install the xorg-x11-devel package which contains the X11 headers. But even after installing it, I still got the same error. I could not figure out the reason why configure was not finding the headers and libs. So after searching the GNU autoconf manual, I found a way to specify the X11 headers and libs on the command line.

./configure --x-includes=/usr/X11R6/include/X11/ --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib/

This did the trick. I'm not sure why it worked the first time and not the second time. See the GNU Autoconf manual for more information about the configure script.

See also Cygwin, X, ratposoin, screen, rxvt setup