Step-by-step guide to setting up inform6-test (Windows)

NOTE: This thread is specific to Windows environments. Please see other threads for other operating systems.

Can anyone assist in putting together a step-by-step guide (i.e. showing terminal commands) to setting up zarf’s inform6-test environment (see GitHub - erkyrath/inform6-test: Collection of unit tests for the Inform 6 library) in Windows? The readme instructions assume a high degree of familiarity with compiling from source in a way that links several new and/or pre-installed libraries, which is a fair step up from the requirements of getting an I6 compiler running.

Reducing this barrier might promote progress on zarf’s very worthwhile initiative to create a test suite for Standard Library 6/11, which has been stalled for years.

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FYI for anyone who wants to try this, it will be necessary to install a support layer to allow the building of the program within Windows. Several options exist:

A pretty good overview of the process of installing Cygwin on Windows, installing basic Linux tools within Cygwin, and getting through the compilation process of a Linux program using Cygwin can be found at:

Some old but probably still valid instructions for installing MinGW can be found at:

In order to get inform6-test to work, you will need to install a number of packages, some of which are probably not on the default list for Cygwin or MinGW/MinGW-w64. A pretty specific list of the required packages can be seen in the instructions for Ubuntu at:

However, those instructions may also depend on packages that are installed by default for Ubuntu-based distributions that aren’t installed by default for Cygwin/MinGW/MinGW-w64. If you run into trouble and get stuck, please post here, and I’ll try to help.

Please do post about any specific problems that you encounter in the process in any case, even if you manage to work through them, so that the instructions can be improved.