[tex-live] Problems using Asymptote on Cygwin [TL2009]

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 20 April 2010 Angelo Graziosi wrote:

 > On Cygwin (TL2009 for i386-cygwin), I have tried what suggested by 
 > user's manual: texmf/doc/asymptote/asymptote.pdf at page 82:
 > 
 > $ latex latexusage
 > $ asy latexusage
 > 
 > Here 'asy' seems to hang (40%-50% of CPU) and soon I find a 
 > 'pdftex.exe.stackdump' file, which is not good...
 > 
 > Besides this, Asymptote creates an '.asy' directory in 'C:/Documents and 
 > Settings/user' instead that in /home/user, as it should be on Cygwin... 
 > It looks as if it is using USERPROFILE (a typical 'Windows native' 
 > environment variable) instead of HOME (which is used in an unix-like 
 > environment as Cygwin).

Looks like an Asymptote problem.  Most people who never used Cygwin
themselves assume that Cygwin just allows you to run Unix programs
under Windows (like MSYS) and don't know that it's a self-contained
Unix-like environment.

However, I suppose that the files in the .asy directory is platform
independent.  Then it's wortwhile to consider $TEXMFHOME/asy instead.
Suppose you have a multi-platform TeX Live system installed on your
USB stick.  Then you certainly don't want to have these files on your
hard drive.

 > Are we sure that the Asymptote binaries shipped with TL2009 Cygwin 
 > binaries are not mixing Cygwin with Windows native (Mingw!?, perhaps!)?

Yes, see below.  MinGW uses MSVCRT.DLL.

$ strings /usr/local/texlive/2009/bin/i386-cygwin/asy.exe | grep -i '\.dll'
freeglut.dll
cygwin1.dll  <=======
GLU32.DLL
KERNEL32.dll
OPENGL32.DLL
USER32.dll

Regards,
  Reinhard

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