[vtkusers] vtk, cygwin and opengl

[R Douglas Everhart]

I recently completed building vtk4.0 on CYGWIN.  I had looked in the mailing
list archives to find a procedure to do this and didn't find a recipe.  So,
I thought others might benefit from my experience.  Here's what you need to
do in addition to the standard vtk build procedures:

1. cmake.  You need to have cmake running under CYGWIN.  This is available
as a standard package now.  You can install it from any CYGWIN distribution
mirror.  This sure beats building it by hand.

2. opengl header files.  You must move or delete the opengl headers in
/usr/X11R6/include/GL (gl.h, glu.h,.....).  These header files are not
congruent with opengl32.  The -I flag in the makefile forces these header
files to be found first, if they are present.  If you fail to do this, you
will get a bunch of undefined library errors when you try to link the vtk
libraries with an application.  The correct headers are present as part of
the w32api package.

3. w32api.  You must have a recent version of w32api.  This insures that
your build will correctly reference opengl-1.1.  I suggest installing the
lastest one from a CYGWIN distribution mirror.

Your mileage may vary, but this is what worked for me.

Enjoy

R. Douglas Everhart
everhart at surfbest.net