WFDB quick start for MS-Windows

Cygwin/32 build and install (including WAVE)

1. Install 32-bit Cygwin (version 2.10 or later) in a location that does not have any spaces in its pathname. The default and preferred location is c:\cygwin. Do not use locations under Program Files, Documents and Settings, or any other directory containing a space in its name. Be sure to select and install the following packages:

   • from the Devel category: gcc-core, gcc-fortran, make
   • from the Libs category: libcurl-devel, libexpat-devel
   • from the Net category: curl
   • from the X11 category: xinit, xview-devel

   If you are updating a previous Cygwin/32 installation of the WFDB Software Package, we recommend updating your Cygwin installation first, using Cygwin's setup-x86 tool.

2. Open a Cygwin terminal window, and leave it open for the remainder of the steps below. To open a Cygwin window, either click on the Cygwin desktop icon, or find and run c:\cygwin\cygwin.bat. Perform the remainder of the installation by typing the commands as shown below into this window. Do not use an MS-DOS window for this purpose.

3. Download and unpack the WFDB sources by typing this command:

   curl https://physionet.org/physiotools/wfdb.tar.gz | tar xvz
   

   This creates a directory with a name of the form wfdb-10.m.n within your working directory. Look at the list of files printed by the command above to determine the name of the directory for the next step.

4. Enter the directory created in the previous step and configure the package:

   cd wfdb-10.m.n
   ./configure
   

   (In the cd command, replace wfdb-10.m.n with the name of the directory as printed by the previous command.)

5. Compile and install the package:

   make install
   

   The binaries will be installed in /usr/bin (accessible from outside the Cygwin environment as c:\cygwin\usr\bin). Be sure that this bin directory is in your PATH.

6. Test the package:

   make check
   

   This step compiles a short program that exercises the WFDB library and prints a summary of test results. Afterwards, the WFDB applications are tested. The tests are very short (typically less than a second each), except that the last one (xform using NETFILES) may take up to a minute if you have a slow or inoperative Internet connection. If any application test fails, its output can be found in the checkpkg subdirectory of the WFDB source tree; compare this output with the files of the same names that can be found in the checkpkg/expected subdirectory.

7. Test WAVE (see below).

Cygwin/64 build and install (excluding WAVE)

1. Install 64-bit Cygwin (version 2.10 or later) in a location that does not have any spaces in its pathname. The default and preferred location is c:\cygwin64. Do not use locations under Program Files, Documents and Settings, or any other directory containing a space in its name. Be sure to select and install the following packages:

   • from the Devel category: gcc-core, gcc-fortran, make
   • from the Libs category: libcurl-devel, libexpat-devel
   • from the Net category: curl

   If you are updating a previous Cygwin/64 installation of the WFDB Software Package, we recommend updating your Cygwin installation first, using Cygwin's setup-x86_64 tool.

2. Open a Cygwin terminal window, and leave it open for the remainder of the steps below. To open a Cygwin window, either click on the Cygwin desktop icon, or find and run c:\cygwin64\cygwin.bat. Perform the remainder of the installation by typing the commands as shown below into this window. Do not use an MS-DOS window for this purpose.

3. Download and unpack the WFDB sources by typing this command:

   curl https://physionet.org/physiotools/wfdb.tar.gz | tar xvz
   

   This creates a directory with a name of the form wfdb-10.m.n within your working directory. Look at the list of files printed by the command above to determine the name of the directory for the next step.

4. Enter the directory created in the previous step and configure the package:

   cd wfdb-10.m.n
   ./configure
   

   (In the cd command, replace wfdb-10.m.n with the name of the directory as printed by the previous command.)

5. Compile and install the package:

   make install
   

   The binaries will be installed in /usr/bin (accessible from outside the Cygwin environment as c:\cygwin\usr\bin). Be sure that this bin directory is in your PATH.

6. Test the package:

   make check
   

MinGW/32 build and install (excluding WAVE)

1. Install MinGW and MSYS using the automated installer tool (mingw-get-inst, also called the "Graphical User Interface Installer" or the "GUI first time installer tool") following the instructions here. Be sure to select the option to use the latest available packages. Use the default installation directory (c:\mingw), and choose all of the optional components.

2. Download the most recent curl source tarball from curl.haxx.se. As of November 2018, the most recent version was curl-7.62.0.tar.gz. Save it in your MinGW home directory (by default, c:\MinGW\msys\1.0\home\User).

3. Download the most recent WFDB source tarball, and save it in your MinGW home directory.

4. Open a MinGW terminal window by clicking on Start → Programs → MinGW → MinGW Shell. Perform the remaining steps of the installation by typing into this window. Do not use an MS-DOS window for this purpose.

5. Install the expat library:

   mingw-get install libexpat
   

   This is needed to build the WFDB-XML applications.

6. Unpack the tarballs using these commands: tar xfvz curl*.tar.gz tar xfvz wfdb.tar.gz

   These commands will create two directories, named curl-7.x.y and wfdb-10.m.n, where x, y, m and n will depend on the version numbers of the packages you have downloaded.

7. Compile and install the curl package first:

        cd curl-7.y.z
        ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
        make
        make install
   

   The ./configure and make commands may require several minutes each.

8. Compile and install the WFDB Software Package after installing curl:

        cd ../wfdb-10.m.n
        ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
        make
        make install
   

9. Test the package:

   make check
   

MinGW/32 install precompiled binaries (excluding WAVE)

1. Install MinGW and MSYS using the automated installer tool (mingw-get-inst, also called the "Graphical User Interface Installer" or the "GUI first time installer tool") following the instructions here. Be sure to select the option to use the latest available packages. Use the default installation directory (c:\mingw), and choose all of the optional components.

2. Download the most recent WFDB MinGW/32 binary tarball, and save it in your MinGW home directory.

3. Open a MinGW terminal window by clicking on Start → Programs → MinGW → MinGW Shell. Perform the remaining steps of the installation by typing into this window. Do not use an MS-DOS window for this purpose.

4. To install the precompiled binaries, type (or copy-and-paste) this command into the MinGW terminal window:

   unzip wfdb-10.6.1-mingw32.zip -d /usr/local
   

Notes:

1. The native Windows applications and libraries created by this procedure are installed in c:\MinGW\msys\1.0\usr\local\bin.

2. Copy the libraries and applications to a directory in your Windows PATH, or add their location to your Windows PATH, if you want to run them using cmd.exe (as, for example, in a DOS box). Avoid installing them in any location that has a space in its pathname.

Compiling and linking your applications with the WFDB library

If you wish to compile your own WFDB applications, or others that are not available in binary format, please begin by compiling and installing the WFDB software package sources, as described above. Once you have done so, copy app/Makefile (a text file contained in the WFDB source package) to the directory that contains the source for the application you wish to compile. Note that app/Makefile is customized based on the installation choices that you make when you run ./configure before compiling the WFDB software package, so it's important to copy the customized version of this file from your copy of the WFDB sources only after running ./configure.

If the application is contained in a single source file (for example, myprogram.c) in the same directory as this customized Makefile, you can compile it and link it with the WFDB library using a command such as

make myprogram

This method is recommended since it can be difficult to construct the proper gcc command line manually. As part of the output of make, you will see the gcc command line it constructs, and you can follow this model for subsequent compilations if you prefer not to use make.

If you need to compile an application contained in several source files, use the command generated by make for a single source file compilation and replace the single source name with those of your multiple source files, separated by spaces. Note that the output file name (the argument of gcc's -o option) should not include the .exe suffix.

The WFDB Software Package also includes wfdb-config, a tiny application that helps to construct gcc command lines without using make. Study the example in wfdb-config(1) to see how to use it.

Using a compiler other than gcc

Use MinGW's gcc to produce WFDB and curl DLLs in Windows native format. You can use any other compiler that is compatible with Windows DLLs to compile application code and link it to these WFDB and curl DLLs, and to other third-party DLLs if you wish.

It is not possible to compile or use WAVE under MS-Windows except by using Cygwin gcc and the Cygwin X11 and XView libraries.

As noted at the top of this page, compiling the WFDB software with a compiler other than gcc is unsupported.

If you do not use gcc, you must do one of the following:

• Use your compiler in ANSI/ISO C mode if this is supported (see your compiler documentation), or
• Define the symbol MSDOS (to any value) when compiling the WFDB Software Package.

If you do neither of these steps, your compiler will generate a defective WFDB DLL that assumes that files are always opened in so-called text mode, resulting in errors when reading and writing signal and annotation files (which are binary files). You can check to see if this has happened by running the command

    rdsamp -r 100s

which should yield 21600 numbered lines of output, ending with

     21596	  982	  995
     21597	  978	  989
     21598	  975	  988
     21599	  975	  989

If the output ends after 940 lines, you have a defective WFDB DLL and you will need to follow the instructions above to correct the problem.

Testing WAVE

If you installed the WFDB Software Package using Cygwin/32, you can try out WAVE by starting the Cygwin X server and then running (in an xterm window, such as the one that opens when you start the X server) the command:

wave -r mitdb/200 -a atr

Note that WAVE's menus (marked with a ∇) are opened using a right click. Annotation editing requires the use of the middle button; if your mouse has only two buttons, you may be able to simulate a middle button click by "chording" (press both buttons at the same time, then release them; see this note for details if necessary).

If you have not used WAVE before, you may want to follow through the tutorial material in the beginning of the WAVE User's Guide.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Albert Titus, for the tip about launching with administrator privileges; Ben McClelland, for information about Cygwin's XView packages; Deborah Jaye, for early testing and feedback on Cygwin/64; and many others who have tested previous versions of these notes.