Windows 95/NT

In order to run MICO on Windows 95 or NT you have to use the Cygnus CDK beta 19, a port of the GNU tools to Win32 or Microsoft's Visual-C++ compiler. For instructions on how to compile MICO using the Visual-C++ compiler, refer to the file README-WIN32 in the main directory of the MICO sources.

Install the CDK by running its setup program. Note that you have to install it in the directory the setup program suggests (c:CygnusCDKB19); otherwise bison won't be able to find its skeleton files. Then create c:bin and put an sh.exe into it. Likewise create c:lib and put a cpp.exe into it:

  mkdir c:\bin
  copy c:\Cygnus\CDK\B19\H-i386-cygwin32\bin\bash.exe c:\bin\sh.exe
  mkdir c:\lib
  copy c:\Cygnus\CDK\B19\H-i386-cygwin32\lib\gcc-lib\2.7-B19\cpp.exe c:\lib

Now you are ready to unpack and compile MICO as described in section 2.3.

There are some problems with the current release of the CDK:

• On standalone machines which are not connected to a name server resolving IP addresses other than 127.0.0.1 into host names will hang forever. This is either a problem with the CDK or with Windows in general. On standalone machines you therefore have to make all servers bind to 127.0.0.1 by specifying -ORBIIOPAddr inet:127.0.0.1:<port> on the command line.
• The gcc 2.7 that comes with the CDK has broken exception handling. Furthermore it seems to be unable to use virtual memory, at least I get out of virtual memory errors although there is a lot of free swap space. I know there are ports of egcs and gcc 2.8 (which might do better), but didn't give them a try.
• There seems to be a problem with automatic TCP port number selection. Usually one binds to port number 0 and the system automatically picks an unused port for you. This basically works with CDK, but sometimes causes hanging connections. The solution is to always explicitely specify port numbers, i.e. give all servers--even ones that are started by micod--the option -ORBIIOPAddr inet:<host>:<port>, where <port> is nonzero.