MinGW users, see that page.

If you have a choice, Cygwin is strongly recommended. The setup program is very self-explanatory. As a warning, it will probably take up >300MB on your system. You should install at least the following programs:

autoconf/automake
binutils
gcc
gdb
gnuplot – for plotting data
groff – needed for the man program, below
gsl – the engine that powers Apophenia
less – to read text files
libtool – needed for compiling programs
make
man – for reading help files
more – not as good as less but still good to have
sqlite3 – a simple database engine, a requisite for Apophenia

If you are missing anything else, the program will probably tell you. The following are not necessary but are good to have on hand as long as you are going to be using Unix and programming.

git – to partake in the versioning system
emacs – steep learning curve, but people love it
ghostscript (for reading .ps/.pdf files)
openssh – needed for git
perl, python, ruby – these are other languages that you might also be interested in
tetex – write up your documentation using the nicest-looking formatter around
X11 – a windowing system

X-Window will give you a nicer environment in which to work. After you start Cygwin, type startx to bring up a more usable, nice-looking terminal (and the ability to do a few thousand other things which are beyond the scope of this documentation). Once you have Cygwin installed and a good terminal running, you can follow along with the remainder of the discussion without modification.

Some older versions of Cygwin have a search.h file which doesn't include the function lsearch(). If this is the case on your system, you will have to update your Cygwin installation.

Finally, windows compilers often spit out lines like:

Info: resolving _gsl_rng_taus by linking to __imp__gsl_rng_taus (auto-import)

These lines are indeed just information, and not errors. Feel free to ignore them.

[Thanks to Andrew Felton and Derrick Higgins for their Cygwin debugging efforts.]

MinGW

Apophenia