This is an article I created almost a decade ago on how to get Minicom working in Cygwin. I used this information to get Minicom working so I could automate switch configurations and at the time it was very useful. The website it was on has been taken down, so I post this here simply to keep it available in case it helps someone.

 

For those of you who are looking for Minicom for cygwin, look no further! A co-worker and I have managed to get it to build and run correctly under Cygwin, and are now making the binaries available to you. I’m not a programmer, and not an all knowing Linux guru. The usual legal mumbojumbo applies. I’m not responsible for this blowing your machine to kingdom come.

Through all the email’s I’ve received, by far the most common question seems to be if I can divulge the secret of how to compile Minicom in Cygwin. I have not been able to figure out how I made it work though the parts listed below may give you some hint.

FIRST:

Extract the files. This can be done in one of two ways. You can either:

Download the Minicom source files to an existing Linux machine (not a cygwin machine). If you don’t have a Linux machine, consider looking at Knoppix, which will let you run Linux on your desktop without having to install a thing. Extract the files, and then get into the Minicom directory and change the name of the aux directory to auxiliary (aux is a windows reserved word and will break all sorts of things if you leave it). Repackage them or somehow transfer them to your windows machine to your home directory under Cygwin.

— or —

Use a windows file tool like WinRAR or 7-zip to extract the tarball. You will get errors about the aux dir. Get into the extracted Minicom directory and create a dir called auxiliary. Extract the files in the aux dir of the tarball into the auxiliary directory.

SECOND:

You will need to edit several files to update the references to aux so that they point to auxiliary. There are 3 references in Makefile.in. There is 1 reference in configure.in. There are 1 or 2 references in configure. In Makefile.am there is 1 reference. In /man, there are some references in Makefile.in and Makefile. In /src also lookin Makefile and Makefile.in.

THIRD:

Make sure you have the following packages installed in Cygwin before procceding with this step:

autoconf
 automake1.4
 gcc
 make
 libncurses-devel <--(very important!)

Run the following command:

./configure --enable-lock-dir=/var/tmp

FOURTH:

Proceed with running make, and make install. If you have problems with errors such as “undefined reference to _LINES” and “undefined reference to _COLS”, then you may need to edit your src/Makefile and find the line that says:

LIBS = -ltermcap

and replace it with

LIBS = -lncurses

FIFTH:

You will want to create a minirc.dfl file in /usr/local/etc/ that looks something like this.

# $Id: minirc.dfl,v 1.1.1.1 2003/03/30 18:55:39 al-guest Exp $
 # Machine-generated file - use "minicom -s" to change parameters.
 pr port /dev/com1
 pu baudrate 9600
 pu bits 8
 pu parity N
 pu stopbits 1
 pu minit
 pu mreset
 pu mconnect
 pu rtscts No

That should be it!

DOWNLOAD:

If you’re just looking for the file, without further ado, here it is.

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