GNU LilyPond

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LilyPond on Windows

WINDOWS - Installing GNU LilyPond on Windows

This document explains how to install the binary release for windows on a Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT or 2000 machine. Please follow the instructions carefully. If it doesn't work for you, please send a bugreport, following the guidelines in the section on bugreports below.

Windows binary setup

If you run Windows NT, 2000 or XP, please become administrator first (currently, installing as an ordinary user will not work). Download and run setup.exe. You will be asked some questions. If you are unsure just click "Next". Do not change the default install directory c:/cygwin.

This installs LilyPond, and Cygwin, GUILE, Python, teTeX (MikTeX is not supported) and GSView. If you already have some of that software under c:/cygwin, then don't worry: nothing will be installed twice.

If you want to install any of this software by hand, do this before you run setup.exe, otherwise your LilyPond setup may not work.

Testing LilyPond

Open a LilyPond shell (To open a a lilypond shell, click the "GNU LilyPond" icon), and type

lilypond --help

You should see something similar to

Usage: lilypond [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Typeset music and or play MIDI from FILE

LilyPond is a music typesetter.  It produces beautiful sheet music
using a high level description file as input.  LilyPond is part of
the GNU Project.

Options:
  -h,--help             this help
[..]

Then, prepare a file called foo.ly, by issuing

notepad foo.ly

\score { \notes { c4 ( ) c4 } }

ly2dvi -P foo

gsview32 foo.ps

If this works, then you can head to the Tutorial to start using LilyPond.

Removing LilyPond

Start setup.exe, click Next, select "Install from Local Directory". Then click next until you reach "Select packages to install". Click "View". Now, for every package, click on the recycle icon until it says "Uninstall". Then, click Next.

(If you find this too tedious, you can also simply remove c:/cygwin. This also removes the /home/ directories under cygwin (i.e. C:\CYGWIN\HOME, so make sure that you bring important files in safety first.)

Troubleshooting

For problems and solutions see Troubleshooting Windows

Bugreports

We can only help you with a problem if you give a full, detailed bugreport. A bugreport includes

• A precise description of the problem.
• A full description of your platform (machine type, operating system)
• All version numbers of relevant software you run. Specifically, we want to see the output of the following commands:
  

    python --version
    lilypond --version
    ly2dvi --version
    gswin32  --version
  

• If ly2dvi fails, then please run it as follows and include the output in the
  

    ly2dvi --verbose MY-FILE
  

You can also check out http://lilypond.org/wiki/?TroubleshootingWindows for more instructions on how to make a bug report.

Please send GNU LilyPond questions and comments to lilypond-user@gnu.org.

Please send comments on these web pages to lilypond@packages.debian.org

Copyright (c) 1997--2001 Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.