Cygwin/X - Development

Links

Documentation - Contains compiled documents and sources for the Cygwin/X documentation. Contributions to the Cygwin/X Documentation are more than welcome.

To-Do List - Contains a list of open development items along with pointers on how to begin working on them.

XWin Server - Sources for updates to the Cygwin/X XWin Server. Contributions to the Cygwin/X XWin Server are more than welcome.

Getting Started

1. Install Cygwin and Cygwin/X using Cygwin's setup.exe. The Cygwin/X User's Guide may be helpful.
2. Get the latest X.org source tree, using the instructions on the XWin Server Development page.
3. You're going to need an editor that is capable of handling UNIX-style end-of-line characters on a Windows machine; two good candidates for this are emacs and nedit. Both emacs and nedit are available via Cygwin's setup.exe.
4. Get Definition of the Porting Layer for X v11 Sample Server, April 8, 1994, Digital Equipment Corporation, MIT X Consortium, X Consortium. .
5. Consider purchasing X Window System - The Complete Reference to Xlib, X Protocol, ICCCM, and XLFD for X11R5, 3rd Edition, 1992, Butterworth-Heinemann and Digital Press, ISBN 1-55558-088-2. A version of this is available in PDF form for X11R4. This book costs about $60; it has been replaced by a three book set costing around $180; for most people the single book will be enough, considering the price difference. Note that these books are available for free online in PDF form; the book is nice because it is much smaller and cleaner than any version that you could print yourself.
6. Refer to MSDN Library Online for documentation on Windows native APIs used e.g. DirectDraw, etc.
7. View the XWin Server code in the X.org git tree under hw/xwin/
8. Pay attention to the cygwin-xfree mailing list and post your discoveries.

Last updated: $Date: 2008/11/28 14:05:00 $ ($Author: jturney $)