Re: Using only the X server of Cygwin

[Rasjid Wilcox <rasjidw at openminddev dot net>]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2002 5:05 am, Rhialto wrote:
> Hi, I am not subscribed to this mailing list but I would like to give
> some feedback anyway. Please Cc: any responses to me.
>
> I am testing the Cygwin/XFree server to use it as a remote display for
> my Unix box which runs xdm: XWin -broadcast.
>
> So in the installer I choose to de-install "All", and to install *only*
> XFree86-xserv. I noted that the installer installed a lot of things that
> are not necessary for that, such as header files, info files, terminfo
> stuff, static link libraries, xterm, sh, twm, etc. And it downloaded a
> lot more which it apparently did not even install, such as bash, diff,
> diffutils, fileutils, etc.
>
> I could also do without all those megabytes of fonts, since I have a
> perfectly ok font server, but apparently no way to specify it for the X
> server.
>

I got a XDMCP session going on Cygwin-XFree86 around September 2001 using 
nothing but
bash.exe
cut.exe
cygpath.exe
cygwin1.dll
cygz.dll
grep.exe
mkdir.exe
mount.exe
pwd.exe
rgb.txt
rm.exe
SecurityPolicy
sleep.exe
test.exe
touch.exe
umount.exe
XWin.exe

and a bash script called winxterm.sh.

You can do without the script (and therefore bash, cut, grep, sleep, test, 
touch and mkdir and so on) but the script automatically uses the next display 
number available (ie, if there is already a display on port 6000, it would 
try 6001, etc).

The script is available at http://www.webone.com.au/~rasjidw/winxterm.sh

NOTE: The script *will* need updating to deal with changes to XWin.exe that 
have occured since September last year.  I have not got around to doing this, 
and probably will not do so.  Last year I got part way through creating a 
nice GUI interface, but decided to wait until the setup.exe process was 
finished (which it now is), and have not got back to it yet.

Others have had similar ideas.  See http://xlauncher.sourceforge.net for 
example.  My GUI was being written in Python/wxWindows.  It is not really at 
the point of being worth sharing, as it has to be largely redone due to the 
setup.exe thing being finished. (Yay!)  Given a recent discussion on the 
list, I will probably try and resurrect my Python/wxWindows code, unless 
someone wants to take up the challenge of a c / c++ version.

Rasjid.