If you just want to run GnuCOBOL and don't care about the shell. GNU/Linux tools or the POSIX environment: just use the MinGW based binaries provided by Arnold Trembley at http://www.arnoldtrembley.com/GnuCOBOL.htm
The most easy way to getting started with GnuCOBOL on Windows is to install OCIDE which includes an older version of GnuCOBOL (but can be updated with the packages Arnold provides), you can get it from https://launchpad.net/cobcide/4.0/4.7.6/+download/OpenCobolIDE-4.7.6_Setup.exe (note: OCIDE is out of development, but you may still find it useful).
For getting GnuCOBOL to compile on cygwin: add at least the libdb devel package in cygwin setup.
Note: the tutorial at Lynda is quite outdated, known to contain some errors (and they seem to have no interest in getting it fixed or response by the GnuCOBOL devs... as you likely have paid for it: hope you still get something out of it).
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I had written a long reply to this and it got lost when I posted, so to recap, I couldn't get the MinGW based binaries provided by Arnold Trembley to work; I had been adding libdb5.3, and I have OCIDE working so I will run with that - thanks.
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@Colin: If you cannot get the more recent MinGW binaries from Arnold to work please start a new topic about this - it should work.
If I remember correctly using them with OCIDE just means to
1) either rename the old GnuCOBOL folder found there and place the new one (with the same name) there instead
2) or to put the new GnuCOBOL folder next to the old one and adjust the compiler / runtime settings in OCIDE --> Preferences to point to this one.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hi all,
I want to be able to run COBOL on my Windows 10 PC, so I downloaded
GnuCobol, and Cygwin setup.exe.
I ran Cygwin setup.exe with packages recommended in a Lynda.com tutorial,
all fine so far. The package names are attached as a jpg.
When I used Cygwin to configure (simply ./configure), the process finished
with Error: Berkeley DB db.h missing
The config.log is attached. The word "error" features 42 times!
Can anyone help me to get this going please?
Cheers,
Col
If you just want to run GnuCOBOL and don't care about the shell. GNU/Linux tools or the POSIX environment: just use the MinGW based binaries provided by Arnold Trembley at http://www.arnoldtrembley.com/GnuCOBOL.htm
The most easy way to getting started with GnuCOBOL on Windows is to install OCIDE which includes an older version of GnuCOBOL (but can be updated with the packages Arnold provides), you can get it from https://launchpad.net/cobcide/4.0/4.7.6/+download/OpenCobolIDE-4.7.6_Setup.exe (note: OCIDE is out of development, but you may still find it useful).
For getting GnuCOBOL to compile on cygwin: add at least the libdb devel package in cygwin setup.
Note: the tutorial at Lynda is quite outdated, known to contain some errors (and they seem to have no interest in getting it fixed or response by the GnuCOBOL devs... as you likely have paid for it: hope you still get something out of it).
What a brilliant reply - thank you very much.
I'm not on Lynda simply for this, hopefully their other stuff isn't as bad!
After years (decades) away from COBOL i thought it would do as a refresher - other suggestions welcome.
Cheers,
Col
I had written a long reply to this and it got lost when I posted, so to recap, I couldn't get the MinGW based binaries provided by Arnold Trembley to work; I had been adding libdb5.3, and I have OCIDE working so I will run with that - thanks.
Yes, I have posted a few via my mail tool (Thunderbird) and they do not
end up on the forums and no its is not Thunderbird's fault.
Clearly a major issue at SF.
Last edit: Simon Sobisch 2018-01-30
@Colin: If you cannot get the more recent MinGW binaries from Arnold to work please start a new topic about this - it should work.
If I remember correctly using them with OCIDE just means to
1) either rename the old GnuCOBOL folder found there and place the new one (with the same name) there instead
2) or to put the new GnuCOBOL folder next to the old one and adjust the compiler / runtime settings in OCIDE --> Preferences to point to this one.
Wow, it arrived !
Update: not getting Arnold's binaries to work was entirely my fault, all working now.