Why no shared library libProofx on cygwin version of ROOT?

[yesw2000]

Hi,

I tried to connect to PROOF server (on Linux) from my client (a PC running cygwin). But it failed due to lacking libProofx on my client. I am using ROOT-5.21.02. Are there any reasons or difficulties to build libProofx for cygwin version of ROOT?

–Shuwei

[ganis]

Dear Shuwei,

The lack of libProofx support under cygwin reflects the lack of support for the XROOTD client under such platform.
The reason is essentially a lack of manpower: for Windows we provide support on VC++ only, as basically done for ROOT.

Is there any reason why you can not try the VC++ build?

This said, there is, in principal, no reason why the thing should not build under cygwin. There may be some little tunings here and there, as always with a new unix flavour. One should give a try, by enabling by hand the relevant flags in the configure scripts.
If you are interested I can give you indications about the way to proceed.

Gerri

[yesw2000]

Hi Ganis,

 I want to connect to a PROOF server from cygwin terminal. I got the following error:

root -l
root [0] TProof* p = TProof::Open(“yesw2000@localhost:3000”)
Error in TProofMgr::GetXProofMgrCtor: can’t locate libProofx
Starting master: opening connection …
Error in TSlave::Create: can’t locate libProofx
SysError in TUnixSystem::UnixTcpConnect: connect (Higgs.phy.bnl.gov:3000) (Connection refused)
Error in TProof::StartSlaves: failed to connect to a PROOF master server
Error in TProofMgr::CreateSession: creating PROOF session
Error in TProof::Open: new session could not be created

where localhost:3000 is a ssh tunnel mapping to a PROOF server.

–Shuwei

[ganis]

Hi Shuwei,

Sorry for the late reply.

If you are within cygwin, then there is no way with a standard ROOT installation to get it work, just because, as you noticed, the plugin is not there.

However, if you install the win32gdk binaries then you have a plugin for Windows which should work.

If this is not possible, for example because you do not have VC++ and you do not want to install the free version of it, then we have to try to get a build under cygwin.
As I wrote, I can give you indications for that, but cygwin is a deprecated platform for ROOT, so support will always be limited.

Cheers,
Gerri

[cplager]

@ganis

cygwin is a deprecated platform for ROOT, so support will always be limited.

I realize that this is the standard Root approach, but it’s not clear why. It’s much easier to build on Windows using cygwin than VC++, allow remote access, etc. The cygwin g++ compiler has made large gains recently. I encourage people to take another look before dismissing it.

Charles

[ganis]

Dear Charles,

I realize that this is the standard Root approach, but it’s not clear why. It’s much easier to build on Windows using cygwin than VC++, allow remote access, etc. The cygwin g++ compiler has made large gains recently. I encourage people to take another look before dismissing it.

The right place to bring this issue up (cygwin support) is probably the “Discussion” section of the forum.

As I wrote, it is probably not much work to build libProofx and XrdClient under cygwin, but it has to be done. For the moment, this is not on the top of our todo list. The situation may change if there were a lot of requests for it.

G. Ganis