When getting software from the internet of CD, they are usually packaged
using a number of standard tools. Here is a list of utilities you will often
need. None of these utilities require other libraries to be used.
A number of packages that can be downloaded on this site require an
unzipper capable of long filename support on Win95/NT.
Download free unzip for Win9X/NT (124Kb)
Simply doing unzip filename will unzip the file, keeping the directory
structure.
A compressor that is rapidly becoming popular because of its high compression
ratio and lack of patent problems is bzip2. Files that are compressed with this
utility often have the .bz2 extensions.
Download bzip2 for Win95/NT (314Kb)
Simply doing bzip2 -d filename will unzip the file, keeping the directory
structure and full names.
DJGPP, the DOS port of gcc, contains a handy utility to redirect standard
in- and output, which also works with GNAT for Win95/NT (from the
command line).
Download 'redir' utility from DJGPP (35Kb)
This utility is handy for things like redirecting error messages to your editor.
For example by doing: redir -eo gnatmake hello > errors.
A lot of GNAT packages come from the unix world and are compressed
using the gzip (GNU zip) compressor.
Download gzip for Win95/NT (21Kb)
To unzip a gzipped package (with extensions like .gz, tgz or .taz)
do: gzip -d filename.
To get the gzip sources, check the Cygnus Win32 homepage through the
Win32 Ada Support Sites
Packages that are compressed with gzip usually contain a so-called
'Tape Archive' or tar file. To get the individual files from this .tar file you
need a tar utility.
Download GNU tar for Win95/NT (56Kb)
To extract the individual files, use: tar -xf [file].tar
To get the tar sources, check the Cygnus Win32 homepage through the
In the unix world it is customary to distribute changes to source files in the
.diff format. A diff file contains the changes to be made to the original
sources. To apply these changes you need a patch program.
If the archive contains no instructions on how to apply the patches, the
following instruction will be the most likely one to succeed:
patch -p0 [file].diff
Download GNU patch for Win95/NT (65Kb)
To get the patch sources, check the Cygnus Win32 homepage through the
Win32 Ada Support Sites
Microsoft made it's help compiler and toolset for Win95 freely available. It can
can be downloaded from here (320K)
For more info on using this system, consult your nearest Windows Programming
manual.
However, you might prefer the new HTML help system.
Copyright © 2001, Jerry van Dijk
Last Updated december-19-2001