Installing Macaulay2 in Windows

Below are instructions for installing Macaulay 2 in a Windows environment (95, 2000, XP, even Vista!), with the preferred emacs interface. This has worked for at least eleven people - please email Graham Leuschke with questions. If you're getting an "Out of environment space, Bad command or file name" error, see the update that follows the instructions.

update 26 March 2005: Rex Dieter has packaged Macaulay2 in Windows Installer format. That's another option for Windows users looking to install M2.

1. download the file "mac2.zip" here (right-click and save it to your C:\ directory). Note: the file is 23 Mb, so will take a while to download. Have a sandwich while you wait.
2. Unzip the file to your C:\ directory. You can do this with one of the free unzip utilities widely available, like Stuffit expander or Info-ZIP. (You may already have one of these installed - try just double-clicking on mac2.zip and see what happens.)
3. The unzipped file willl be automatically extracted to C:\Macaulay2-0.9.2. Note: this location is important, since several of the files in the distribution depend on M2 being located here, rather than in some subdirectory.
4. Find the file C:\Macaulay2-0.9.2\_emacs. Depending on how you have set up your machine, it may be hidden. If so, change your preferences under the View menu.
5. Copy the file C:\Macaulay2-0.9.2\_emacs to the C:\ directory (at the top level).
6. Run the emacs program file in a window, by double-clicking C:\Macaulay2-0.9.2\emacs-21.2\bin\emacs.exe. (You can also do this from an MS-DOS prompt, but if you know enough to do that, you're probably ok at this point.)
7. When emacs starts, press the F12 key to start M2.

You're up and running! Hope this is useful to you - please let us know if we can be more helpful.

update: Some people, mostly users of Windows 95 and 98, get an error when they open emacs and press F12: the emacs buffer says, "Out of environment space,Out of environment space, Bad command or file name". That's no fun. It's happening because you do not have enough memory available for the MS-DOS environment. We don't have a perfect solution to this problem yet. The best approach is to follow the directions on this Microsoft webpage. This doesn't always work, but it does at least half the time. We'll keep looking for better solutions.

update: If you are comfortable editing Windows batch files, you might try the following solution, due to Jesús Gago Vargas: add the variables M2HOME and M2WINH to your autoexec.bat file. For example, you might add:

rem The slashes in the next line should be /
set M2HOME=c:/Macaulay2-0.9.2/lib/Macaulay2-0.9.2


rem The slashes in the next line should be \
set M2WINH=c:\Macaulay2-0.9.2\lib\Macaulay2-0.9.2

(changing the path according to your machine, of course). Editing autoexec.bat is risky business, so please be careful!

Credit: Sunsook Noh for providing the zipped file, and Amelia Taylor for letting us know. Thanks!