[Swarm-Support] I can't get SWARM to work on XP

[Mark Hovenden]

Greetings all from Tasmania,

I know this will seem like I am completely inept, but I just CAN’T get Swarm stable release 2.2 (the Object-C version) working on my PC running XP. I have followed the instructions on Swarm.org, read the FAQs back to front (all of the various ones with different instructions), set my SWARMHOME, re-installed etc but I just have NO success. I’m a plant ecologist interested in climate change impacts and the role of competition in structuring communities and thus ecosystem function. I really want to use SWARM and participate in the development of great Individual Based Ecology Models, and contribute to the establishment of accepted methods (the just like PROC GLM in SAS idea) as per the ethos of Grimm an Railsback’s “Individual Based Modelling and Ecology”. However, after three extremely frustrating days with aching eyes, disturbed sleep and hair all over the floor, I am sorely tempted to do what they plead against and start from scratch with Visual Basic.

 

And I’m not completely stupid, I know my way around a PC and can code very successfully in other languages like Visual Basic and even learned BASIC in the late 70s on a Radio Shack computer and a little FORTRAN, so I just don’t know what I am doing wrong.

 

Basically, I downloaded the executable for the Cygwin version of Swarm and followed the instructions of the Swarm installation notes on the web. So, Cygwin is installed in C:\Cygwin. So good so far. Then the installer downloads the Swarm files and sticks them on the desktop (C:\Documents and Settings\mark_jh\desktop\http%3a%2f%2fftp.swarm.org%2fpub%2fswarm%2fbinaries%2fw32%2fcygwin). This contains 2 folders, (contrib and release) and a setup.ini file. In release there are many folders and in contrib. there are three (blt, hdf5 and swarm). Inside that swarm folder I found the swarm-2.2-1-tar.bz2. I unzipped the Swarm 2.2-1 into C:\Swarm-2.2 using Winzip. I also downloaded swarmapps-objc-2.2-3.tar.gz and unzipped it into C:\Swarm-2.2\Stupid\.

 

So, I fire up Cygwin from the desktop shortcut and type “ls” to find where I am and I have no idea. The list of files/folders doesn’t bear any resemblance to any folder I can find on my PC. Anyway, I persevered and navigated to C:\Swarm-2.2, followed the instructions to “make” and nothing happens at all.

 

I have read the user guide, have a pile of books about programming in C from the library, which I have partly read, but I just can’t get Swarm actually started. I have spent over two days trawling around the swarm wiki site and the mailing list archives to no avail.

 

What am I missing?

 

Enormous thanks to anyone who can help.

 

All the best,

 

Mark

 

A/Prof. Mark Hovenden                               Locked Bag 55

School of Plant Science                                  Hobart Tas. 7001

University of Tasmania                                  Australia

phone: +61 3 6226 7874

fax: +61 3 6226 2698